ANTH 211 - Virtual Anthropology

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
0.5 unit(s)

The Digital Age opened exciting new possibilities for the study of human evolutionary anatomy. Imaging technologies such as laser scanning and computed tomography (CT) put high resolution physical data in a computer-based environment, allowing powerful visualizations and unprecedented analyses. This Intensive gives students experience with the types of questions, data and methods used in Virtual Anthropology. These methods help shed new light on long-extinct species – what did the brain of 10 million year old monkeys look like? How did the 300,000 year old species Homo naledi grow its teeth? What do the joint surfaces of fossil Australopithecus tell us about how these earliest humans walked? Working from questions like these, students experience directly the pros and cons of computer-based study of recent and fossil human anatomy. Intensive may be taken for up to two semesters. Zachary Cofran.

Course Format: INT