Michel Brunet (paleontologist)
Encyclopedia
Michel Brunet is a French
paleontologist and a professor at the Collège de France
. In 2001 Brunet announced the discovery in Central Africa of the skull and jaw remains of a late Miocene
hominid nicknamed Toumaï. These remains are believed to predate the earliest previously known hominid remains, Lucy
, by over three million years.
Brunet was born in 1940 in Vienne
, in the region of Poitou
. After having passed his first years in the countryside, at 8 he moved with his family to Versailles
. He took a Ph.D.
in paleontology
at the Sorbonne
and then became Professor of Vertebrate paleontology
at the University of Poitiers
, specializing in hoof
ed mammal
s.
A turning point in Brunet's career was when he heard that paleoanthropologist David Pilbeam
was searching for fossil
ape
s in Pakistan
and the ancestors of the hominids. This spurred Brunet to form with his colleague Emile Heintz a team with the idea of also searching for extinct apes across the border from Pakistan in Afghanistan
. The expedition was unsuccessful, and no fossil apes were found.
In the 1980s Brunet and Pilbeam matched together and moved to Africa
. Their idea was to verify the theory of Yves Coppens
that hominids had first rose in the savanna
s of Eastern Africa. The two paleontologists idea was that the shores of Lake Chad
were particularly indicated to work as a magnet for mammals, and maybe also hominids. In 1984 searching begun in Cameroon
, but the nine field seasons spent there were discouraging, with no hominids found.
A new opportunity presented itself to Brunet when the government of Chad
gave him the permission to conduct researches in the Djurab Desert, that due the Chadian Civil War
had long been closed to foreigners. Brunet promptly formed the French-Chadian Paleoanthropological Mission (Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco-Tchadienne or MPFT) a Franco-Chadian scientific alliance that united the University of Poitiers
, the University of N'Djamena
and the Centre Nationale d'Appui à la Recherche (CNAR).
The area proved itself to be a site rich in fossils, and expeditions headed by Brunet have collected over 8000 of them, including hominid remains. On January 23, 1995 he spotted a jawbone 3.5 million years old, that he classified as a new species
of Australopithecine
, the Australopithecus bahrelghazali
. Informally he called it Abel
, as a tribute to his dead friend Abel Brillanceau. Abel was the first fossil hominid found in Western Africa, radically transforming the discussions on early hominid distribution, that until this discovery was thought to center only in Southern and especially Eastern Africa.
While much discussed, a yet more important find was to be made by Brunet's team on July 19, 2001; a Chadian student of the mission, Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye, unearthed a nearly complete cranium, from 6 to 7 million years old, nicknamed Toumaï by the Chadian President Idriss Déby
, and classified by Brunet as the first exemplary of the Sahelanthropus tchadensis
. Brunet and others, like Tim White, are strongly convinced Toumai to be a hominid, though this is contested by colleagues like Milford Wolpoff, who instead believe it to be an ape. Other experts, like Chris Stringer, argued it was inconclusive where the Sahelanthropus belongs in the human evolutionary line.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2313695.stm Brunet has argued that further excavations have uncovered additional remains which further confirm that Sahelanthropus was a hominid, though his conclusions with these newer findings are also debated by some scientists.
The discovery brought Brunet worldwide recognition in the field of paleoanthropology
; and in 2003 he was awarded the Dan David Prize
, a prize given to those whose achievements help better understand the world, or affect it.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
paleontologist and a professor at the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
. In 2001 Brunet announced the discovery in Central Africa of the skull and jaw remains of a late Miocene
Miocene
The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about . The Miocene was named by Sir Charles Lyell. Its name comes from the Greek words and and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern sea invertebrates than the Pliocene. The Miocene follows the Oligocene...
hominid nicknamed Toumaï. These remains are believed to predate the earliest previously known hominid remains, Lucy
Lucy (Australopithecus)
Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, several hundred pieces of bone representing about 40% of the skeleton of an individual Australopithecus afarensis. The specimen was discovered in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years...
, by over three million years.
Brunet was born in 1940 in Vienne
Vienne
Vienne is the northernmost département of the Poitou-Charentes region of France, named after the river Vienne.- Viennese history :Vienne is one of the original 83 departments, established on March 4, 1790 during the French Revolution. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Poitou,...
, in the region of Poitou
Poitou
Poitou was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.The region of Poitou was called Thifalia in the sixth century....
. After having passed his first years in the countryside, at 8 he moved with his family to Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
. He took a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in paleontology
Paleontology
Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
and then became Professor of Vertebrate paleontology
Vertebrate paleontology
Vertebrate paleontology is a large subfield to paleontology seeking to discover the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord, through the study of their fossilized remains...
at the University of Poitiers
University of Poitiers
The University of Poitiers is a university in Poitiers, France. It is a member of the Coimbra Group.-History:Founded in 1431 by Pope Eugene IV and chartered by King Charles VII, the University of Poitiers was originally composed of five faculties: theology, canon law, civil law, medicine, and...
, specializing in hoof
Hoof
A hoof , plural hooves or hoofs , is the tip of a toe of an ungulate mammal, strengthened by a thick horny covering. The hoof consists of a hard or rubbery sole, and a hard wall formed by a thick nail rolled around the tip of the toe. The weight of the animal is normally borne by both the sole...
ed mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
s.
A turning point in Brunet's career was when he heard that paleoanthropologist David Pilbeam
David Pilbeam
David Pilbeam is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and curator of paleoanthropology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D...
was searching for fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
ape
Ape
Apes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea. The apes are native to Africa and South-east Asia, although in relatively recent times humans have spread all over the world...
s in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
and the ancestors of the hominids. This spurred Brunet to form with his colleague Emile Heintz a team with the idea of also searching for extinct apes across the border from Pakistan in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. The expedition was unsuccessful, and no fossil apes were found.
In the 1980s Brunet and Pilbeam matched together and moved to Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. Their idea was to verify the theory of Yves Coppens
Yves Coppens
Yves Coppens is a French anthropologist. He graduated from the University of Rennes. He has studied ancient hominids and has had multiple published works on this topic, and has also produced a film....
that hominids had first rose in the savanna
Savanna
A savanna, or savannah, is a grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently small or widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of C4 grasses.Some...
s of Eastern Africa. The two paleontologists idea was that the shores of Lake Chad
Lake Chad
Lake Chad is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Africa, whose size has varied over the centuries. According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, it shrank as much as 95% from about 1963 to 1998; yet it also states that "the 2007 ...
were particularly indicated to work as a magnet for mammals, and maybe also hominids. In 1984 searching begun in Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
, but the nine field seasons spent there were discouraging, with no hominids found.
A new opportunity presented itself to Brunet when the government of Chad
Chad
Chad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...
gave him the permission to conduct researches in the Djurab Desert, that due the Chadian Civil War
Chadian Civil War
The Transitional Government of National Unity was the coalition government of armed groups that nominally ruled Chad from 1979 to 1982, during the most chaotic phase of the long-running civil war that began in 1965. The GUNT replaced the fragile alliance led by Félix Malloum and Hissène Habré,...
had long been closed to foreigners. Brunet promptly formed the French-Chadian Paleoanthropological Mission (Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco-Tchadienne or MPFT) a Franco-Chadian scientific alliance that united the University of Poitiers
University of Poitiers
The University of Poitiers is a university in Poitiers, France. It is a member of the Coimbra Group.-History:Founded in 1431 by Pope Eugene IV and chartered by King Charles VII, the University of Poitiers was originally composed of five faculties: theology, canon law, civil law, medicine, and...
, the University of N'Djamena
University of N'Djamena
The University of N'Djamena is the leading institution of higher education in Chad. It was created in 1971 as the University of Chad, and was renamed to "University of N'Djamena" in 1994....
and the Centre Nationale d'Appui à la Recherche (CNAR).
The area proved itself to be a site rich in fossils, and expeditions headed by Brunet have collected over 8000 of them, including hominid remains. On January 23, 1995 he spotted a jawbone 3.5 million years old, that he classified as a new species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of Australopithecine
Australopithecine
The term australopithecine refers generally to any species in the related genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus. These species occurred in the Plio-Pleistocene era, and were bipedal and dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than modern apes, lacking the...
, the Australopithecus bahrelghazali
Australopithecus bahrelghazali
Australopithecus bahrelghazali is a fossil hominin that was first discovered in 1993 by the paleontologist Michel Brunet in the Bahr el Ghazal valley near Koro Toro, in Chad, that Brunet named Abel...
. Informally he called it Abel
Abel (hominid)
Abel is the name given to the only specimen ever discovered of Australopithecus bahrelghazali. Abel was found in January 1995 in Chad in the Kanem Region by the paleontologist Michel Brunet, who named the fossil "Abel" in memory of his close friend Abel Brillanceau, who had died of malaria in...
, as a tribute to his dead friend Abel Brillanceau. Abel was the first fossil hominid found in Western Africa, radically transforming the discussions on early hominid distribution, that until this discovery was thought to center only in Southern and especially Eastern Africa.
While much discussed, a yet more important find was to be made by Brunet's team on July 19, 2001; a Chadian student of the mission, Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye, unearthed a nearly complete cranium, from 6 to 7 million years old, nicknamed Toumaï by the Chadian President Idriss Déby
Idriss Déby
General Idriss Déby Itno is the President of Chad and the head of the Patriotic Salvation Movement. Déby is of the Bidyat clan of the Zaghawa ethnic group. He added "Itno" to his surname in January 2006.-Rise to power:...
, and classified by Brunet as the first exemplary of the Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Sahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct hominid species that is dated to about . Whether it can be regarded as part of the Hominina tree is unclear; there are arguments both supporting and rejecting it...
. Brunet and others, like Tim White, are strongly convinced Toumai to be a hominid, though this is contested by colleagues like Milford Wolpoff, who instead believe it to be an ape. Other experts, like Chris Stringer, argued it was inconclusive where the Sahelanthropus belongs in the human evolutionary line.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2313695.stm Brunet has argued that further excavations have uncovered additional remains which further confirm that Sahelanthropus was a hominid, though his conclusions with these newer findings are also debated by some scientists.
The discovery brought Brunet worldwide recognition in the field of paleoanthropology
Paleoanthropology
Paleoanthropology, which combines the disciplines of paleontology and physical anthropology, is the study of ancient humans as found in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted bones and footprints.-19th century:...
; and in 2003 he was awarded the Dan David Prize
Dan David Prize
The Dan David Prize annually awards 3 prizes of $1 million each awarded by the Dan David Foundation and Tel Aviv University to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution in the fields of science, technology, culture or social welfare. There are three prize categories - past, present and...
, a prize given to those whose achievements help better understand the world, or affect it.
See also
- List of fossil sites (with link directory)
- List of hominina (hominid) fossils (with images)
- Sahelanthropus tchadensisSahelanthropus tchadensisSahelanthropus tchadensis is an extinct hominid species that is dated to about . Whether it can be regarded as part of the Hominina tree is unclear; there are arguments both supporting and rejecting it...