SoS 280: The Measure of Motion with Dr. Christine Harper

Chris and Cristina sit down with Dr. Christine Harper, a biological anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, whose research focuses on the functional morphology and biomechanics of the human and nonhuman primate postcranial skeleton, with the goal of understanding how musculoskeletal form relates to locomotor behavior. She uses these patterns to place early hominins in context and reconstruct how they may have moved. Her work takes a quantitative, data-driven approach, using tools such as 3D geometric morphometrics, high-density semilandmarks, spherical harmonic analyses (SPHARM), whole-bone trabecular analyses, musculoskeletal modeling, and advanced statistical methods for high-dimensional data. She also develops and tests novel methods to address challenges in analyzing complex, multi-dimensional data. ------------------------------ Find the paper discussed in this episode: Harper, C. M., & Patel, B. A. Functional morphology of trabecular bone in the calcaneus of African apes. Journal of Anatomy. https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.70141 ------------------------------ Contact Dr. Harper: [email protected] ------------------------------ Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Chris Lynn, Host Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu, E-mail: [email protected], Twitter:@Chris_Ly Cristina Gildee, Co-Host & Co-Producer Website: cristinagildee.com, E-mail: [email protected]