Dr. 'Yohannes Haile-Selassie' (b.
Adigrat,
Ethiopia,
February 23,
1961) is an Ethiopian
paleoanthropologist. An authority on pre-''
Homo sapiens''
hominids, he particularly focuses his attention on the
Rift and
Middle Awash Valleys of
East Africa.
He began his education at
Addis Ababa University in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, graduating in the summer of 1982 with a B.A. degree in history. His first job was at the
Ethiopian National Museum in Addis Ababa.
His graduate education began at
The University of California, Berkeley, where he 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
Physical Anthropology Department at the
Cleveland Museum of Natural History in
Cleveland, Ohio, where he works currently. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Anatomy at
Case Western Reserve University.
Haile-Selassie is well known in the field of paleoanthropology for having a gift for fossil spotting, with his first fossil hunting expedition (White's
Middle Awash Project) taking place in 1990. He has been instrumental in the discoveries of the type specimen (principal reference fossil) for ''
Australopithecus garhi'' and ''
Ardipithecus kadabba'' (both discovered in 1997), and has also found fossil specimens of ''
Ardipithecus ramidus'', ''
Australopithecus afarensis'', and species of Homo including ''
Homo erectus'', and ''
Homo sapiens''. From 2004 through 2007, he has led digs in the Mille district of the
Afar Region of Ethiopia (the Woranso-Mille Project).
The research conducted by Haile-Selassie has been primarily funded by
the Leakey Foundation.
He has published in the ''
American Journal of Physical Anthropology''.
External links
★
Yohannes Haile-Selassie page at Cleveland Museum of Natural History site
★
Yohannes Haile-Selassie interview from ''The Plain Dealer''
★
Article about Yohannes Haile-Selassie from ''The Plain Dealer''
★
Article about discovery of hominid remains (July 2007)