Yohannes Haile-Selassie Ambaye (born 23 February 1961) is an Ethiopian

paleoanthropologist Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinsh ...

. An authority on pre-''

Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture ...

hominid The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the ...

s, he particularly focuses his attention on the

East African Rift The East African Rift (EAR) or East African Rift System (EARS) is an active continental rift zone in East Africa. The EAR began developing around the onset of the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago. In the past it was considered to be part of ...

and

Middle Awash The Middle Awash is a paleoanthropological research area in the Afar Region along the Awash River in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. It is a unique natural laboratory for the study of human origins and evolution and a number of fossils of the earliest ...

valleys.Mangels, John (2004-07). Fossil Hunter Transcripts. The Plain Dealer, July 2004. Retrieved on 2014-09-12 from http://www.cleveland.com/sundaymag/plaindealer/index.ssf?/sundaymag/more/fossil04.html. He was curator of

Physical Anthropology Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a scientific discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly from an e ...

at the

Cleveland Museum of Natural History The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum located approximately five miles (8 km) east of downtown Cleveland, Ohio in University Circle, a 550-acre (220 ha) concentration of educational, cultural and medical instit ...

from 2002 until 2021, and now is serving as the director of the

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...

Institute of Human Origins. Since founding the institute in 1981, he has been the third director after

Donald Johanson Donald Carl Johanson (born June 28, 1943) is an American paleoanthropologist. He is known for discovering, with Yves Coppens and Maurice Taieb, the fossil of a female hominin australopithecine known as "Lucy" in the Afar Triangle region of Hada ...

and

William Kimbel William "Bill" Kimbel (April 15, 1954 – April 17, 2022) was a renowned paleoanthropologist specializing in Plio-Pleistocene hominid evolution in Africa. He had a multi-decade career at Arizona State University, first as a professor in the Anth ...

Biography

Yohannes began his tertiary education at the

Addis Ababa University Addis Ababa University (AAU) ( am, አዲስ አበባ ዩኒቨርሲቲ) is a national university located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It is the oldest university in Ethiopia. AAU has thirteen campuses. Twelve of these are situated in Addis Ababa ...

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; am, አዲስ አበባ, , new flower ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, t ...

, graduating in the summer of 1982 with a B.A. degree in history. His first job was at the Center for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage in Addis Ababa. His graduate education began at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, where Yohannes 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

Department at the

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the United States, U.S. U.S. state, state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along ...

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

, where he works currently. He serves as an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Anatomy at

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

and as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Institute of Paleoenvironment and Heritage Conservation,

Mekelle University Mekelle University ( ti, መቐለ ዩኒቨርሲቲ) is a higher education and training public institution located in Mekelle, Tigray Region, Ethiopia, 783 kilometers north of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. Mekelle University is one of the l ...

. Yohannes is well known in the field of paleoanthropology for having a gift for

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

spotting, with his first fossil hunting expedition (White's

Middle Awash Project The Middle Awash Project is an international research expedition conducted in the Afar region of Ethiopia with the goal of determining the origins of humanity. The project has the approval of the Ethiopian Culture Ministry and a strong commitment to ...

) taking place in 1990. He has been instrumental in the discoveries of the type specimen (principal reference fossil) for ''

Australopithecus garhi ''Australopithecus garhi'' is a species of australopithecine from the Bouri Formation in the Afar Region of Ethiopia 2.6–2.5 million years ago (mya) during the Early Pleistocene. The first remains were described in 1999 based on several skele ...

'' and ''

Ardipithecus kadabba ''Ardipithecus kadabba'' is the scientific classification given to fossil remains "known only from teeth and bits and pieces of skeletal bones", originally estimated to be 5.8 to 5.2 million years old, and later revised to 5.77 to 5.54 million ye ...

'' (both discovered in 1997), and he has also found fossil specimens of ''

Ardipithecus ramidus ''Ardipithecus ramidus'' is a species of australopithecine from the Afar region of Early Pliocene Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago (mya). ''A. ramidus'', unlike modern hominids, has adaptations for both walking on two legs ( bipedality) and life i ...

'', ''

Australopithecus afarensis ''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would no ...

'', and species of ''Homo'' including ''

Homo erectus ''Homo erectus'' (; meaning "upright man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Several human species, such as '' H. heidelbergensis'' and '' H. antecessor ...

'', as well as ''

''. Since 2004, he has led digs in the Mille

woreda Districts of Ethiopia, also called woredas ( am, ወረዳ; ''woreda''), are the third level of the administrative divisions of Ethiopia – after ''zones'' and the '' regional states''. These districts are further subdivided into a number of ...

of the

Afar Region The Afar Region (; aa, Qafar Rakaakayak; am, አፋር ክልል), formerly known as Region 2, is a regional state in northeastern Ethiopia and the homeland of the Afar people. Its capital is the planned city of Semera, which lies on the pave ...

of Ethiopia (the Woranso-Mille Project). In June 2010, Yohannes published a paper describing

Kadanuumuu Kadanuumuu ("Big Man" in the Afar language) is the nickname of KSD-VP-1/1, a 3.58-million-year-old partial ''Australopithecus afarensis'' fossil discovered in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in 2005 by a team led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of ...

, one of the specimens his group found in Afar. The research conducted by Yohannes has been primarily funded by the

Leakey Foundation Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (7 August 1903 – 1 October 1972) was a Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa, particularly through discoveries made at Olduvai ...

. He has published in the ''

American Journal of Physical Anthropology The ''American Journal of Biological Anthropology''Info pages about the renaming are: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/26927691/homepage/productinformation.html and https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/26927691 (previously known as ...

'' and ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

''. "New species from Ethiopia further expands Middle Pliocene hominin diversity"

References

External links

Yohannes Haile-Selassie page
at Cleveland Museum of Natural History site

from ''The Plain Dealer''

from ''The Plain Dealer''

(May 2015)
Yohannes Haile-Selassie
at Pubmed {{DEFAULTSORT:Yohannes Haile-Selassie 1961 births Living people Addis Ababa University alumni UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Case Western Reserve University faculty Ethiopian paleoanthropologists American paleoanthropologists People from Tigray Region Adigrat Ethiopian expatriates in the United States