Mes recherches portent sur l’évolution des communautés de petits mammifères d’Afrique depuis la fin du Pliocène jusqu’à aujourd’hui. J’aborde plus particulièrement des questions concernant la taxinomie des rongeurs, et l’utilisation des assemblages fossiles à des fins de reconstruction paléoenvironnementale et d’outil biochronologique.

Pour y répondre, j’utilise différentes approches combinant mes connaissances en paléontologie, en anatomie et en écologie, ainsi que des outils de morphométrie géométrique et de machine learning.

Les assemblages que j’étudie proviennent principalement d’Afrique du Sud et du Botswana, et j’aimerais prochainement comparer les structures et dynamiques des communautés d’Afrique australe avec celles d’Afrique du Nord et de l’Est.

Quaternary studies in the field of animal communities with integrated approaches of paleontology, zooarchaeology and taphonomy. Actualist and (paleo)eco-ethological studies, especially on human and animal predation. Reconstruction of paleoenvironments and climatic context in the Plio-Pleistocene.

I study fossil pollen and phytoliths as paleobotanical markers of past vegetation in order to reconstruct paleovegetations associated with Mio-Pliocene and Pleistocene hominins in Central and East Africa.

I am interested in the interactions between plants, vegetation and present-day climate in the tropics, and the influence of these three factors on botanical markers for tracing climatic and plant community changes in the past. Since 2018, I have been participating in the OGRE paleontological mission in the Shungura Formation, Omo Valley, Ethiopia.

Currently, I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Poitiers. My research interest focuses in exploring the relationships between morphology and dietary behavior of megaherbivores (proboscidean; elephants, and their relatives) revealed from hominid bearing sites of the Afar Rift Valley (e.g., Middle Awash and Hadar) and the Turkana Depression in Ethiopia (Shungura Formation) and Kenya. For the study, I will use multiproxy approaches such as dental wear analyses (dental microwear texture analysis and mesowear) as well as stable isotope study for a better understanding of their responses to various environmental contexts and changes.

This research will contribute to understand the impact of Late Miocene to Middle Pleistocene environments on the habitats of megafauna, which were shared with many other animals including hominins.

I am a limnogeologist based at the Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Preventives (National Institute of Preventative Archaeological Research, or INRAP) in Lyon, France. Prior to joining the WTAP in 2010 and refocusing my work on the East African Rift System (EARS) I worked at Lake Baikal in central Asia.

Limnogeology is the study of sediments formed by inland waters (e.g. lakes, ponds, rivers, wetlands), and in West Turkana my specific research interest is the sedimentary cyclicity and temporal evolution of lake deposits, which I use to reconstruct past climatic, tectonic, and environmental changes and how they influenced hominin evolution during the Plio-Pleistocene. My approach involves identifying sequences of ancient lake sediments where they are exposed in the Nachukui Formation and performing detailed sediment analyses to determine the processes and contexts (deep, shallow, endorheic etc) that led to their deposition. As the largest endorheic water body in a desert on earth, Lake Turkana has undergone remarkable changes in size, shape, and hydrology over time, and has played a key role in affecting the environments and locations that were available for hominins to exploit.

• Long-term surface dynamics of Africa
• Geomorphology, regolith, georesources
• Structural Geology, tectonics, Source-to-Sink

I am a prehistorian who performs archaeological research along the eastern African Rift system in order to reconstruct the dynamics of human settlement in relation to the emergence of new technical practices, new behavioural skills and related paleoenvironments, from the early hominins bearing the Oldowan culture to the early ‘Homo sapiens’ groups, authors of the Middle Stone Age, i.e. from ca. 2.3 million years to 30 thousand years before present.