Rachel Caspari

Rachel Caspari is a Professor of Anthropology at Central Michigan University and a member of the Core Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders in the Bone Research Center at the University of Michigan. Dr. Caspari is a paleoanthropologist with a focus on the Upper Pleistocene and demographic changes in human evolution.  She has worked on fossil human remains from Europe, Africa and Asia, and is particularly interested in the role of changes in population structure and life history in the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition and the origin of modern humans.  Dr. Caspari’s current research focuses on methods to increase the resolution and accuracy of age at death estimates in prehistoric remains, using high resolution computed tomography to assess age-related histological changes in dental tissues to better address the evolution of human age structure and senescence. Dr. Caspari also has a long-standing interest in the relationship between race and epistemology in paleoanthropology, and is the co-author of the award winning Race and Human Evolution (Simon and Shuster, 1997).