Science Cafe Orlando

This lecture and hands-on laboratory will follow the anatomical trends in the skulls of our earliest ancestors, who walked on two legs 4500 thousand years ago, to the evolution of modern humans 200 thousand years ago. We will use slides and casts of these paleontological species to answer questions such as “When and why did humans develop such big brains compared to other animals?”  ”Why do we have such a problem with tooth-crowding, requiring extractions and braces?” “When and why did we lose our big brow ridges and expand our foreheads?”

Leslie Sue Lieberman, Ph.D., is a biomedical anthropologist and the founding Director of the Women’s Research Center, Emerita Professor of Anthropology (June 2011) and Courtesy Professor of Medical Education at the University of Central Florida. She currently holds a position as a European Union Visiting Scholar. She is a founding member of the Orlando Cafe Scientifique. Most of her research is centered on obesity and diabetes among US minority populations. She is the former President of the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition and the Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association, both the UCF and UF Chapters of Sigma Xi, the Florida Academy of Sciences and of the National Association of Academies of Science/AAAS. Her research and scientific activities have been supported by NIH, NSF, HRSA, NIMH and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Diabetes Research and Education Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Florida Humanities Council, and private industry. She has co-authored or edited 11 books and published over 75 journal articles and book chapters and more than 200 other works: reports, reviews, and editorials.