Yohannes Haile-Selassie

Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie (b. Adigrat, Ethiopia, February 23, 1961) is an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist. An authority on pre-"Homo sapiens" hominids, he particularly focuses his attention on the Rift and Middle Awash Valleys of East Africa.

He began his education at Addis Ababa University in Addis Ababa, graduating in the summer of 1982 with a B.A. degree in history. His first job was at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.

His graduate education began at The University of California, Berkeley, where he was mentored by Tim White and earned an M.A. in Anthropology in 1995 and a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology in 2001. In 2002, he became the Curator and Head of Physical Anthropology Department at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Cleveland, Ohio, where he works currently. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Anatomy at Case Western Reserve University.

Haile-Selassie is well known in the field of paleoanthropology for having a gift for fossil spotting, with his first fossil hunting expedition (White's Middle Awash Project) taking place in 1990. He has been instrumental in the discoveries of the type specimen (principal reference fossil) for "Australopithecus garhi" and "Ardipithecus kadabba" (both discovered in 1997), and has also found fossil specimens of "Ardipithecus ramidus", "Australopithecus afarensis", and species of Homo including "Homo erectus", and "Homo sapiens". From 2004 through 2007, he has led digs in the Mille woreda of the Afar Region of Ethiopia (the Woranso-Mille Project).

The research conducted by Haile-Selassie has been primarily funded by [http://www.leakeyfoundation.org/ the Leakey Foundation] .

He has published in the "American Journal of Physical Anthropology".

External links

* [http://www.cmnh.org/site/ResearchandCollections_PhysicalAnthropology_Staff_Haile-Selassie.aspx Yohannes Haile-Selassie page] at Cleveland Museum of Natural History site
* [http://www.cleveland.com/sundaymag/plaindealer/index.ssf?/sundaymag/more/fossil04.html Yohannes Haile-Selassie interview] from "The Plain Dealer"
* [http://www.cleveland.com/sundaymag/plaindealer/index.ssf?/sundaymag/more/fossil01.html Article about Yohannes Haile-Selassie] from "The Plain Dealer"
* [http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070717/sc_livescience/possiblelinktolucysancestorsfound Article about discovery of hominid remains] (July 2007)