Sally McBrearty was an American

paleoanthropologist Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and biological anthropology, anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as wikt:hominization, hominization, throug ...

and Paleolithic archaeologist. She was a professor and head of the anthropology department at the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

Education and career

McBrearty studied at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

, completing her PhD at Illinois in 1986. She joined the

in 1994, was appointed a professor in 2002, and head of the department of anthropology in 2008. Previously, she held positions at

Brandeis University Brandeis University () is a Private university, private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located within the Greater Boston area. Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian, non-sectarian, coeducational university, Bra ...

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, and the

College of William & Mary The College of William & Mary (abbreviated as W&M) is a public university, public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1693 under a royal charter issued by King William III of England, William III and Queen ...

. She was elected a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

in 2007.

Research

Middle Stone Age in Africa

McBrearty's work on the

Middle Stone Age The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of ...

(MSA) in Africa helped kickstart a paradigm shift in the understanding of modern human behavior. With colleague Alison S. Brooks, McBrearty published "''The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior''," one of the most-cited papers in the history of Paleolithic archaeology. This paper argued that behavioral modernity arose in Africa over a long period of time, and that it is visible very early in the MSA archaeological record. This view challenged European-centric models for human evolution that argued for a sudden appearance of behavioral modernity in Europe during the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories ...

Chimpanzee evolution

McBrearty and her colleague

Nina Jablonski Nina Grace Jablonski (born August 20, 1953)
at chimpanzee The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of Hominidae, great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close rel ...

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 preserve ...

s. McBrearty collected the first fossil, a

molar tooth The molars or molar teeth are large, flat teeth at the back of the mouth. They are more developed in mammals. They are used primarily to grind food during chewing. The name ''molar'' derives from Latin, ''molaris dens'', meaning "millstone toot ...

, during her surveys at

Kapthurin The Kapthurin Formation is a series of Middle Pleistocene sediments associated with the East African Rift Valley. Part of the East African Rift System, it is also an important archaeological site in the study of early humans who occupied ...

in the

East African Rift Valley 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. It was formerly considered to be part of a la ...

in 2004, and immediately suspected that it belonged to an

ape Apes (collectively Hominoidea ) are a superfamily of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (though they were more widespread in Africa, most of Asia, and Europe in prehistory, and counting humans are found global ...

. Joblonski, a specialist in

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes. Thus monkeys, in that sense, co ...

fossils, then examined the tooth and positively identified it as chimpanzee. She also found a second example, an

incisor Incisors (from Latin ''incidere'', "to cut") are the front teeth present in most mammals. They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below. Humans have a total of eight (two on each side, top and bottom). Opossums have 18, wher ...

, in the same collection. The following year McBrearty's team returned to Kapthurin and discovered a further two fossil chimpanzee teeth. They believe that all four teeth belonged to the same individual. McBrearty and Jablonski announced the discovery in a paper in ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'' in 2005. As well as being the first known chimpanzee fossils, the teeth were the first fossils of modern, non-human apes found in Africa. Dating to around 500,000 years ago, they were also discovered outside the range of modern chimpanzees, overturning a previous idea that the Rift Valley was a barrier to the species. McBrearty has proposed that fossils of chimpanzees are scarce because their preferred habitat—the wet jungles of Central and

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

—experience poor conditions for preservation. Researchers did not expect to find the ancestors of chimpanzees in the drier savannahs of the Rift Valley, typically seen as the

ecological niche In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. Three variants of ecological niche are described by It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of Resource (biology), resources an ...

of archaic humans, but McBrearty believes that there are more examples there because of the better preservation.

Personal life

McBrearty lived in

Glastonbury, Connecticut Glastonbury ( ) is a town in the Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, United States, formally founded in 1693 and first settled in 1636. It was named after Glastonbury in Somerset, England. Glastonbury is ...

. She was married to Andrew Hill, also a paleoanthropologist, until his death in 2015.

References

External links

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:McBrearty, Sally Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American paleoanthropologists American archaeologists American women archaeologists American women anthropologists American prehistorians University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Brandeis University faculty Yale University faculty College of William & Mary faculty University of Connecticut faculty Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science