Anna Katherine "Kay" Behrensmeyer is an American taphonomist and paleoecologist. She is a pioneer in the study of the fossil records of terrestrial ecosystems and engages in geological and paleontological field research into the ecological context of human evolution in East Africa. She is Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) of the Smithsonian Institution. At the museum, she is co-director of the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems program and an associate of the Human Origins Program.
Education and career Behrensmeyer received her bachelor of arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis. In 1968, Behrensmeyer made a detailed investigation of Lothagam, a Kenyan paleontological formation dating to the late Miocene-early Pliocene period. Within the succession, she identified six lithostratigraphic units. She later compiled a chart for the 400 fossil specimens collected in 1967 and published a faunal list for Lothagam 3 in 1976. While she was a graduate student at Harvard in 1969, Behrensmeyer was invited by paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey to be his team geologist and to map fossil deposits at Koobi Fora in Kenya. She discovered a cluster of stone tools eroding out of a volcanic tuff, an ash layer from an ancient eruption that filled a small paleochannel. The site was named in her honor and the layer was named the Kay Behrensmeyer Site Tuff or KBS Tuff. The tools were similar to those discovered by Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge. The radiometric dating used by the team indicated that the fossils were 2.6 million years old. The dating of the site was controversial, as it contradicted other paleobiological evidence. A later independent investigation revised the date to 1.9 mya. Behrensmeyer received her Ph.D. the in vertebrate paleontology and sedimentology from Harvard University department of Geological Sciences in 1973. Her dissertation, published in 1975, showed that the composition of the fossil vertebrate faunas of East Turkana, Kenya, varied with sedimentary environment (channel, floodplain, lake margin), and this provided new information on the taphonomy and paleoecology of hominin-bearing, Plio-Pleistocene sediments . She held post-doctoral positions at UC Berkeley and Yale and taught for the UC Santa Cruz Earth Science Board before beginning her career at the Smithsonian Institution in 1981. Since 1986, she has led research on the geological context of Olorgesailie. Since 1987, Behrensmeyer has been the co-director of Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems Program at the National Museum of Natural History. From 1993 to 1996, she served as Acting Associate Director for Science at NMNH. She has served as associate editor for the Paleobiology, PALAIOS, and Palaeoclimates journals. From 1985 to 1987, she was on the board of associate editors for the Journal of Human Evolution. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona and George Washington University.
Aside from Behrensmeyer's research into the paleoecology and taphonomy of hominid-bearing deposits in the Olorgesailie basin, Baringo basin and East Turkana, she has conducted a long-term study of the taphonomy of modern vertebrate remains in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya, that began in 1975, in collaboration with ecologist David Western. The study involves a census of live animals and carcasses every five to ten years. The study suggests that fossil animal assemblages in tropical settings may be used to make inferences about ancient habitats when post-depositional taphonomic biases are accounted for. At a field area in Kenya known as Koobi Fora where work by Behrensmeyer had begun in 1978, field work in 2026 by her and other anthropologists has opened the possibility of a better understanding of the physical size of a hominid for whom records are scarce. Her other projects include field exploration and analysis of Upper Triassic – Lower Jurassic vertebrate taphonomy and paleoecology in Arizona and paleoecological research in the Miocene Pakistan Siwalik sequence. Behrensmeyer also is compiling a taphonomic reference collection of bones and fossils at the National Museum of Natural History. She was named one of the "50 Most Important Women Scientists" by Discover magazine in 2002.
Honors and awards 2016: Raymond C. Moore Medal of the Society for Sedimentary Geology 2018: Romer-Simpson Medal of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 2018: Paleontological Society Medal 2019: G. K. Warren Prize 2020: Elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences
Selected publications Behrensmeyer has published over 130 scientific articles.
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