Adrienne Zihlman

Adrienne Zihlman is currently Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research and publications center around issues in human origins and human evolution, for example: bipedal locomotion, role of women, comparative functional anatomy, sex differences in apes and early hominids, growth and development, and individual life history. She collaborated with Jane Goodall on the skeletal biology of Gombe chimpanzees and is currently working with Christophe Boesch on the Tai Forest chimpanzee skeletons to investigate population variation and growth and development. For over 25 years she has carried out whole body dissections of apes in order to supplement hard tissue data for evaluating similarities and differences of fossil and living apes. Her theoretical interests include the history of ideas in human evolution, the nature of the common ancestor of apes and humans, life history theory, and species patterns of growth and development. She authored the The Human Evolution Coloring Book for introductory students and co-edited and contributed to The Evolving Female. A Life History Perspective.  She is a AAAS Fellow and a Fellow and Honorary Science Trustee of the California Academy of Sciences.