Professor Peter Ungar

 

Dr. Ungar received his BA (1985) in Anthropology at the State University of New York at Binghamton in and his MA (1989) and PhD (1992) in Anthropological Sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1992-1993, and as a Research Associate in the Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy at the Duke University Medical Center from 1993 to 1995.  Dr. Ungar is also an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in the Palaeonthropology Unit for Research and Exploration, Bernard Price Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.  He joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas in 1995.

Dr. Ungar is most interested in the paleoecology of early hominins. This is the study of how our distant ancestors and their contemporary cousins made use of their environments to earn a living. His work integrates three fields of research: 1) dental anthropology (especially the study of relationships between diet and the sizes, shapes and wear of teeth in living primates), 2) primate feeding ecology (the study of the diets and feeding adaptations of living primates), and 3) paleoanthropology (the study of fossil human ancestors and our close relatives).

His work on the sizes, shapes and wear on teeth involve using new technologies to better understand relationships between teeth and diet in living primates. This work focuses on the dental topographic analysis and dental microwear texture analysis. Dental topographic analysis involves the use of geographic information systems combined with laser scanning to demonstrate how teeth are adapted to wear in ways that keep them mechanically efficient for fracturing specific sorts of foods.

Dental microwear texture analysis, in contrast, involves the study of microscopic use-wear in teeth, and how different patterns relate to different diets. This approach involves the combination of white-light scanning confocal microscopy with scale-sensitive fractal analysis (see dental microwear).

It is difficult to interpret how differences in tooth size, shape and wear relate to differences in diet without a firm understanding of primate feeding ecology. To this end, Dr. Ungar has logged thousands of hours of direct observation of feeding ecology of apes and monkeys in Indonesia , and monkeys in Venezuela and Costa Rica .

This work has, as it’s ultimate goal, the better understanding of the dietary adaptations and feeding behaviors of early hominins and other extinct primates. Dr. Ungar has studied original remains of many fossil species, from Neandertals and earlier members of our own genus, to earlier Pliocene forms from South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia . He has also analzed Oliogocene, Miocene, and Plio-Pleistocene monkeys and apes from Europe and East Africa . As a final note, his paleontological fieldwork experiences include participation in projects involving the search for evidence of Pleistocene humans in Botswana , Jordan and South Africa , and the excavation of fossil Miocene apes in Hungary , and Paleocene mammals in Montana . He has also contributed to GIS analyses of fossil hominin sites in South Africa .

Dr. Ungar’s research has been funded by extamural grants from the National Science Foundation, the LSB Leakey Foundation, the Sigma Xi Society, the Boise Fund, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. He has published two edited volumes on the evolution of human diet, and more than 100 articles and abstracts.

Dr. Ungar is now working on several other projects, including a book on the adaptive radiation of tooth form in mammals and a new technique for skin cancer detection using approaches developed for dental microwear analysis.

Dr. Ungar advises undergraduates, MA and PhD students in the Department of Anthropology. He also advices PhD students in the interdisciplinary Environmental Dynamics Program.  He teaches courses each year at all levels, including An Introduction to Biological Anthropology (ANTH 1013), Human Evolution (ANTH 3433), Primate Adaptations and Evolution (ANTH/BIOL 4613), and  Human Evolutionary Anatomy (ANTH 5423).

Click here for a full Curriculum Vitae (pdf format).