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Darren Curnoe is an anthropologist, palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist. He is also a former TV journalist. He has
published 70 articles,
chapters, abstracts, book reviews and media articles, almost 50 of
them in peer-reviewed scientific journals and books. His interests span many
aspects of human evolution, with a focus on the fossil hominin record
spanning the last 2.6 million years, or Pleistocene Epoch. Curnoe's work
has mostly sought to understand the palaeobiology, evolution,
diversity and systematics of the human genus, Homo, with strong interests in both early members of this group through to the more recent record documenting the emergence of Homo sapiens
and establishment of modern human populations. He has worked in the
field for many years - surveying and excavating fossil and archaeological sites - as
well as on museum collections in Africa for 15 years and in China for 5
years. He has also undertaken studies of the earliest human remains in
Australia from the Willandra Lakes World Heritage area. His broad interest in human and primate ecology has also led to studies of free ranging primates in Africa.
He has been at the University of New South Wales since late 2002, initially in the Department of Anatomy, School of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine
(2002-2008), and then the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental
Sciences, Faculty of Science (2009-present). He has taught biological
anthropology for a decade, taught human anatomy in medical schools for 6
years, and now regularly also teaches palaeontology, zoology, earth
sciences and archaeology.
Curnoe received the degrees of Bachelor of Arts (1st Class Honours) in 1996 and
Doctor of Philosophy in 2000, from the Australian National University,
Canberra. Honours was completed under the
supervision of Professor Colin Groves examining the
comparative anatomy and systematics of the 'Black Skull' (KNM-WT 17000). His PhD was undertaken
in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History (ANH), Research
School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS), in the fields of
palaeoanthropology and geochronology. His main supervisors were Dr Alan
Thorne and Professor Rainer Grun, although, he considers Professors Rhys
Jones and Colin Groves to have been important influences during this
time. Curnoe's PhD research focused on assessing the geological age and
systematics of early Homo from the South African palaeocave sites in the World Heritage Cradle of Humankind. However, he was also
involved in various projects at this time including studies of the
skeletal biology and geological age of Australia's earliest human
remains: the 'Mungo Man' or Lake Mungo 3 skeleton.
An important outcome of his PhD work was the earliest direct-dating study of hominin remains: c2 million year old Paranthropus robustus
from Swartkrans cave. His electron spin resonance dating work also
helped lay the foundation for a rigorous chronological framework for
human evolution in southern African, after almost 80 years of dating
uncertainty (work he has extended with Dr Andrew Herries and others
using various methods).
Following
completion of his PhD, he was a visiting fellow in ANH, RSPAS, for two
years. He worked closely
with Alan Thorne during this time, developing ideas relating to the
timing of colonisation of Australia and the origins and diversity of the
earliest Indigenous inhabitants of this continent. Although he never
published any direct research relating to the Multiregional hypothesis
of modern human origins, Curnoe was committed to a view of minimal
species diversity and deep-time continuity across the globe at this
time. This view last manifest itself as support for the Assimilation
hypothesis in a solo-authored paper published during 2007.
During
2002, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Sterkfontein
Research Unit, School of Anatomical Sciences, University of the
Witwatersrand (Johannesburg). His supervisor and mentor at that time was
Emeritus Professor Phillip Tobias. Following Tobias' invitation, and
under his supervision, he reconstructed and provided the first detailed
description, comparison and classification of the most complete skull of
early Homo from southern Africa: specimen Stw 53 from
Sterkfontein cave. This work built on his PhD research and focused on a
set of much neglected fossils crucial to understanding the emergence,
defining features and evolution of Homo.
Professor Tobias' invitation to study these remains was a defining
moment in Curnoe's career and afforded him a rare, remarkable and
life-defining opportunity.
Curnoe maintained a
close working relationship with Alan Thorne until the mid-2000s when
their views diverged and he reconsidered his ideas about modern human origins and moved away from the biological systematics school and biological species
concept (as championed by Ernst Mayr). Despite these differences, he
counts Alan Thorne among his most important influences and mentors.
At this time, he
began to delve into explanations provided by the emerging field of
'evo-devo' and to seek more 'honest' and rigorous approaches to
taxonomic and phylogenetic hypothesis building and testing, such as
provided by the phylogenetic systematics school. This was an extension
of his earlier work employing genetic distances to test ideas about
lineage diversity and macroevolution, as well as a return to earlier
ideas outlined in his PhD and published in two phylogenetic studies in
the South African Journal of Science during 2001 and 2002. This shift in philosophy and methodology was largely forced by his
experiences with hominin
materials in South Africa, Kenya and China where he regularly
encountered fossils that appeared to violently undermine his earlier
views. After spending much of the previous decade disagreeing with more
speciose views of hominin evolution, he found himself on a professional
and intellectual 'road to Damascus', increasingly striving for a scientific approach
consistent with the spirit of 'Popperian' enquiry (hypothetico-deductive approach) and keyed into best
practice within the broader biological sciences.
In 2010, Curnoe described the new species Homo gautengensis for the southern African Lower Pleistocene Homo assemblage.
The idea of H. gautengensis is traceable to his PhD work where he
had considered Stw 53 and SK 847 to represent different species, and
taxa distinct from eastern African early Homo (H. habilis and H. rudolfensis).
Thus, it was a species more than a decade in the making, and reinforces
the views of other investigators who had also been impressed by the
differences between southern and eastern samples of early Homo.
Much of his present
research focuses on the later Pleistocene hominin record of southwest
China as well as on innovative 'virtual' investigations of fossils using
3D and engineering techniques in collaboration with Dr Stephen Wroe and
others at the University of New South Wales. He also has ongoing
interests and commitments in South Africa, including various projects with Dr James Brink (National Museum - Bloemfontein), such as hominin fossil research and field-based projects, and in Kenya, including fieldwork in the Central Rift valley with
Professor John Gowlett (University of Liverpool) and members of the
National Museums of Kenya. He also maintains an active interest in the topic of the origins of Indigenous Australasians and recently published an article offering a new explanation about Pleistocene human population variation and challenging the Multiregional and Assimilation hypotheses.
In 2009, he founded and presently convenes the Asian-Australasian Association of Palaeoanthropologists,
the first professional organisation of its kind in the region. The
group is focused on providing new opportunities for research and
collaboration across the broad Asian region and helping Asian colleagues
engage in international collaboration and to bring their work to the
attention of the broader (international) scientific community.
Details of many of his peer-reviewed publications can be found at UNSW's Research Gateway and on his Researcher ID and Academia.Edu pages. |
