Briana Pobiner

Briana Pobiner is an Associate Research Professor of Anthropology at the George Washington University. As a paleoanthropologist, her research centers on the evolution of human diet (with a focus on the ecology of meat-eating), but has included topics as diverse as cannibalism in the Cook Islands and chimpanzee carnivory. She has done fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Indonesia. Her favorite field moments include falling asleep in a tent in the Serengeti in Tanzania while listening to the distant whoops of hyenas, watching a pride of lions eat a zebra carcass on the Kenyan equator, and discovering fossil bones that were last touched, butchered and eaten by one of her 1.5-million-year-old ancestors. Pobiner joined the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in 2005, where in addition to continuing her active field, laboratory, and experimental research programs, she leads the Human Origins Program’s education and outreach efforts. Pobiner has also more recently developed a research program in evolution education and science communication.