African Research At The California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences (CAS) in San Francisco is one of the four largest institutions of its kind in the United States and is the oldest on the West Coast. Researchers at the Academy study the origins, evolution and diversity of species, their adaptations, systematics and phylogenetics. The Department of Anthropology joins departments of Ichthyology, Herpetology, Ornithology and Mammalogy, Aquatic Biology, Invertebrate Zoology and Geology, Entomology and Botany, as well as centers for Applied Biodiversity Informatics and Comparative Genomics, to study the biodiversity and evolution of living things through fundamental laboratory and field research. This collaborative environment, in which original research and public outreach are given primacy, is an ideal setting for Alemseged’s interests.
Alemseged and the DRP return to the Dikika field site every fall. The team’s research during these field seasons has contributed significantly to the Academy’s research on human origins and has added valuable data to the CAS Anthropological collection. In addition to Alemseged’s anthropological work in Africa, the Academy sponsors a number of different African projects led by researchers in varied disciplines. Dr. Robert C. Drewes, Curator of Herpetology, leads an annual expedition to the Gulf of Guinea Islands (Principe, Sao Tome and Annobon), to study the region’s amphibian fauna. Dr. Frank Almeda, Chairman and Senior Curator of Botany, studies the vascular plants and lichens of the rainforests of southern Madagascar, and members of the Invertebrate Zoology and Geology Department have conducted field work in both Madagascar and South Africa. Additionally, in 2007, Dr. Galen Rathbun and Dr. Jack Dumbacher, of the Ornithology and Mammalogy Department, led a collecting expedition to the Namibian desert. This multidisciplinary approach to the biogeography of the region allows the California Academy of Sciences to study the full spectrum of Africa’s natural history and its vital role as the birthplace of mankind.
Read more about this topic: Zeresenay Alemseged
Famous quotes containing the words african, research, california, academy and/or sciences:
“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“I did my research and decided I just had to live it.”
—Karina O’Malley, U.S. sociologist and educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5 (September 16, 1992)
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All the sciences are now under an obligation to prepare for the future task of philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the rank order of values.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)