Kaedan O’Brien
Researching prehistoric ecosystems and long-term climate change where modern humans originated
Graduate, Department of Anthropology
Kaedan O-Brien, PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology, is using Wilkes Center funding to analyze the carbon, oxygen, and strontium stable isotopes from drilled fossil herbivore tooth enamel from Kenya. These three elements allow us to reconstruct past diet, vegetation cover, rainfall, seasonality, and migration over the past 100,000 years. This information will allow us to interpret how prehistoric animals lived, how ecosystems functioned, and long-term climate change in a key location for modern human origins.