Environmental Futures Seminar - Tanya Smith

Professor Tanya Smith is a biological anthropologist who specialises in uncovering microscopic records of climate, diet, growth, nursing, and stress locked inside teeth. These records begin prior to birth and continue throughout childhood, and can be found in ancient humans and other mammals who lived hundred to millions of years ago. We’ve recently demonstrated that teeth record changes in drinking water that occur as they are forming, and are faithful enough to predict past rainfall patterns with good fidelity. This approach has been used to examine Neanderthal children from southeastern France, who experienced some rough seasons 250,000 years ago, as well as ancient apes who lived in Africa 17 million years ago. In this latter instance, high-fidelity paleoseasonality reconstructions from fossils were consistent with other evidence that a changing climate played an important role in influencing the anatomy and development of humanity’s forebears. Smith’s research is funded by the Australian Research Council, and is discussed in several articles in The Conversation as well as her popular science book The Tales Teeth Tell.