project

a research evolution

Paleobiomics has the primary objective to bring mineralized tissue biology into the global mainstream of human evolution research and to exploit the extent to which organismal biology may be represented in bone and tooth microscopic anatomy.

While numerous laboratories of human evolution worldwide serve well the study of macroscopic morphology, too few researchers are trained in the microanatomical aspects of the skeleton, which is a reservoir for biological traits indicative of an organism’s development, physiology, and metabolism. There is thus a huge conceptual, theoretical, and practical space to be occupied within the global human evolution research infrastructure.

Project description

Our Paleobiomics initiative is dedicated to the highest quality research on bone, the skeleton, and the dentition. Its members undertake this research with aspiration, passion, individual pride, and spirit.

Paleobiomics is different from other fields of research because of its emphasis on studying the tiny features in bones and teeth for clues about how we and other vertebrates have grown and evolved. Paleobiomics is broader and more integrative than related interdisciplinary fields such as paleoanthropology and paleontology.

Paleobiomics: explaining the term

Ome This refers to the body objects of study in a biological system.

Omics A field of study whose body of objects and their functions and processes are examined as a major subject area of systems biology.

Biome The totality of characteristics of climate and geography and plant and animal composition of a defined ecological zone.

Biomics Systems biology applied to the study of biomes.

Paleobiomics Systems biology applied to the study of past biomes.

Technology

To understand how modern-day man evolved from his ancestors, paleobiomicists use high-powered microscopes and three-dimensional imaging software to compare bone and tooth samples from contemporary man with hard tissue fossils of ancestral humans. In addition to helping us better understand how man evolved from past to present, Paleobiomics can provide clues about the future direction of human evolution. This research can be expected to guide the way to several advances. For example, microanatomical characteristics most likely exist that allow us to assign sex to hard tissues with acceptable probability.

Furthermore, because rates of growth and variability in body size are coupled with whole-body metabolic variation, hard tissue microanatomical research combined with metabolomics will permit metabolic reconstructions of extinct species that are consistent with early fossil human gross morphological and paleoecological reconstructions, including their dietary and locomotor niches.

CONTACT US

Dr. Timothy G. Bromage

Hard Tissue Research Unit

Department of Biomaterials & Biomimetics

New York University College of Dentistry

345 East 24th Street

New York, NY 10010-4086

USA

Dr. Friedemann Schrenk

Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung

Sektion Paläoanthropologie

Senckenberganlage 25

60325 Frankfurt

Deutschland

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Paleobiomics has the primary objective to bring mineralized tissue biology into the global mainstream of human evolution research and to exploit the extent to which organismal biology may be represented in bone and tooth microscopic anatomy.

While numerous laboratories of human evolution worldwide serve well the study of macroscopic morphology, too few researchers are trained in the microanatomical aspects of the skeleton, which is a reservoir for biological traits indicative of an organism’s development, physiology, and metabolism. There is thus a huge conceptual, theoretical, and practical space to be occupied within the global human evolution research infrastructure.

Our Paleobiomics initiative is dedicated to the highest quality research on bone, the skeleton, and the dentition. Its members undertake this research with aspiration, passion, individual pride, and spirit.

Paleobiomics is different from other fields of research because of its emphasis on studying the tiny features in bones and teeth for clues about how we and other vertebrates have grown and evolved. Paleobiomics is broader and more integrative than related interdisciplinary fields such as paleoanthropology and paleontology.

To understand how modern-day man evolved from his ancestors, paleobiomicists use high-powered microscopes and three-dimensional imaging software to compare bone and tooth samples from contemporary man with hard tissue fossils of ancestral humans. In addition to helping us better understand how man evolved from past to present, Paleobiomics can provide clues about the future direction of human evolution. This research can be expected to guide the way to several advances. For example, microanatomical characteristics most likely exist that allow us to assign sex to hard tissues with acceptable probability.

Furthermore, because rates of growth and variability in body size are coupled with whole-body metabolic variation, hard tissue microanatomical research combined with metabolomics will permit metabolic reconstructions of extinct species that are consistent with early fossil human gross morphological and paleoecological reconstructions, including their dietary and locomotor niches.

Paleobiomics has the primary objective to bring mineralized tissue biology into the global mainstream of human evolution research and to exploit the extent to which organismal biology may be represented in bone and tooth microscopic anatomy.

While numerous laboratories of human evolution worldwide serve well the study of macroscopic morphology, too few researchers are trained in the microanatomical aspects of the skeleton, which is a reservoir for biological traits indicative of an organism’s development, physiology, and metabolism. There is thus a huge conceptual, theoretical, and practical space to be occupied within the global human evolution research infrastructure.

Our Paleobiomics initiative is dedicated to the highest quality research on bone, the skeleton, and the dentition. Its members undertake this research with aspiration, passion, individual pride, and spirit.

Paleobiomics is different from other fields of research because of its emphasis on studying the tiny features in bones and teeth for clues about how we and other vertebrates have grown and evolved. Paleobiomics is broader and more integrative than related interdisciplinary fields such as paleoanthropology and paleontology.

To understand how modern-day man evolved from his ancestors, paleobiomicists use high-powered microscopes and three-dimensional imaging software to compare bone and tooth samples from contemporary man with hard tissue fossils of ancestral humans. In addition to helping us better understand how man evolved from past to present, Paleobiomics can provide clues about the future direction of human evolution. This research can be expected to guide the way to several advances. For example, microanatomical characteristics most likely exist that allow us to assign sex to hard tissues with acceptable probability.

Furthermore, because rates of growth and variability in body size are coupled with whole-body metabolic variation, hard tissue microanatomical research combined with metabolomics will permit metabolic reconstructions of extinct species that are consistent with early fossil human gross morphological and paleoecological reconstructions, including their dietary and locomotor niches.