Postdoctoral Research Associate in Biological Anthropology, Dr Ameline Bardo, has been awarded a prestigious Cobb Professional Development Grant from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA).
The grant will allow Dr Bardo to run the project ‘A helping hand: Investigating the 3D motion of human hand bones during Palaeolithic tool behaviours’.
The project aims to reveal how the bones of the human hand move and interact with each other when performing Palaeolithic stone tool behaviours. The importance of the project lies in examining the strong, selective pressures on the evolution of human hand bone and soft tissue anatomy.
Using state-of-the-art 3D X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (X-ROMM) techniques at the University of Liverpool, Ameline and her team will quantify, for the first time, the 3D kinematics of the human thumb, index finger and associated wrist bones during in vivo simulated Palaeolithic tool behaviours on human participants. The proposed research will shed new light on the biomechanics of the human hand and provide fresh perspectives for more informed, functional interpretations of fossil human hand morphology associated with particular tool technologies.
This project is between Dr Bardo and Professor Tracy Kivell at the School of Anthropology and Conservation, in collaboration with Dr Kris D’Aout at the Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, University of Liverpool.