New PhD student

The first PhD student for FINDER, Samantha Brown, arrived in Europe from her native Australia to undertake a 3-year research degree with FINDER.

After obtaining her BA in Archaeology in Australia, Samantha (Sam) moved in 2016 to the University of Oxford where she received a MSc degree. For her Masters dissertation she worked on the pilot study that led to FINDER. She used peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS) and radiocarbon dating to identify taxonomically and directly date using radiocarbon about 2500 bones from Denisova Cave. Within this assemblage she discovered a tiny human bone (DC 11) and the findings of this work were published in 2016 [1].

In FINDER will expand on this work, analysing more sites from Siberia using ZooMS, radiocarbon dating and aDNA analysis.

Samantha Brown, first PhD student for FINDER

 

FINDER Projects begins

FINDER project was launched on the 1st of June 2017. It is based at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in Jena, Germany.

FINDER is a 5-year (2017-2022), ERC-funded adventure that will take us to several locations across Eurasia, in the hope that we discover new human fossils in the “faunal” assemblages recovered from Pleistocene sites.

We will be updating this space with news, photos of this journey, and publications the team will produce along the way.