The Uno Terrestrial Paleoecology Lab
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Geochemistry, Biomarkers, Fossils, and Human Evolution.
Welcome to the Uno Terrestrial Paleoecology Research Group! We are geochemists and earth scientists who study past changes in climate, ecosystems, and mammalian and human evolution, with a focus on their interconnectedness.
Our lab group adheres to the Harvard’s Community Conduct, whereby we commit to providing an environment where each of us can participate fully in the life of the University, whether we are studying, teaching, conducting research, or working in other ways. Harvard released a comprehensive series of Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policies. Our lab group also maintains the principles of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Code of Conduct.
Lab News
October 9, 2023. New Paper Alerts! Former graduate advisee and collaborator Deming Yang published a paper on how to model Sr isotopes in tusks and teeth to better reconstruct migration histories of mammals. He has a great thread on X, formerly Twitter, about the paper.
Former postdoc and now assistant professor Rachel Lupien published a paper on long term, low frequency orbital and climate controls on rainfall and ecosystems in eastern Africa over the last 4.5 million years using plant wax carbon and hydrogen isotopes. She posted a great thread on X.
Both papers can be downloaded from the Publications page.
September 1, 2023. We are excited to have Eleanor Pereboom join the group as a new graduate student. Before joining the Uno Lab at Harvard, Eleanor worked as a research assistant in James Russell’s paleoclimate & paleoecology lab at Brown University. She holds bachelors degrees from Brown University (Sc.B. Environmental Science) and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA Ceramics). Welcome Eleanor!
July 1, 2023 . We moved! The Uno Lab is now at Harvard University in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. We are so excited to start this next chapter and embark on new research paths.
May 2, 2023 . Today @BarnardCollege undergraduate Sneha Bapana presented her awesome senior thesis on early & middle Miocene diets and ecology in the #turkanabasin ! She handled all questions with aplomb! Congrats Sneha!! Her advisors @D_R_Green and @kevin_t_uno were beaming. @LamontEarth
January 3, 2023 . New Person Alert! Today we welcome Dr. Enquye Negash to the lab! Enqu comes to us from George Washington University where she completed her PhD and then received a postdoctoral appointment in Dr. Andrew Barr’s PAPER Lab. With a deep background in stable isotope ecology, Enqu will will analyze biomarkers in modern soils, lake sediments, and plants from eastern Africa and combine these data with spatial analysis of vegetation. Welcome Enqu!
December 9, 2022. BIG NEWS. The Uno Lab is moving! I’m excited to announce that I'll be joining the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology (HEB) as an associate professor next July! At Harvard, we will continue to explore human evolution and climate with geochemistry. I’ll be recruiting students and postdocs for fall 2024 so please reach out! I’m super excited to work with new colleagues in HEB, Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Organismal and Evolutionary Biology!
February, 21 2022 . New Person Alert! Today we welcome Maria Kuzina to the lab! Maria recently graduated from Columbia University and joins our lab as a Research Staff Associate. She will work on a variety of projects in the lab. Maria studied abroad in Kenya and took my Paleoecology course in 2020. She is an accomplished equestrian and spent some years on the Russian Olympic team! Welcome Maria!
January, 1 2022 . New Person Alert! Today we welcome Dr. Troy Ferland to the lab! Troy is an organic geochemist who just defended his PhD at Penn State last month. He joins the lab to work on a series of projects related to hominins and their use of fire. Field work for these projects may take Troy around the world—or at least to Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, the Turkana Basin, Kenya, and the Nihewan Basin in China. In the lab, Troy will analyze plant waxes and PAHs to study past vegetation and fire. Welcome to Lamont Troy!
July, 1 2021 . New Person Alert! We are excited to announce that Dr. Daniel Green officially joins our lab group today! Daniel is a Biological Anthropologist who combines stable isotopes and modeling to explore seasonality in the past. He received a two-year Earth Institute Postdoc Fellowship to work on fossil teeth for the Turkana Miocene Project and from the Pleistocene sediments of the Koobi Fora Formation—he’s already in Kenya on his first day on the job! You can learn much more about Dan here: https://www.danielrgreen.org/. Welcome Daniel!
June 30, 2021 . New Paper Alert! Rachel’s latest paper, Eastern African environmental variation and its role in the evolution and cultural change of Homo over the last 1 million years is out today in the Journal of Human Evolution! Rachel’s bulk and plant wax carbon isotope records show an increase in open or arid ecosystems beginning during the MPT and a period of high variability from ~275 to 180 ka. Phytolith data from Rahab Kinyanjui support the isotope data and tell us about woody cover and grass type.
April 13, 2021 . New Paper Alert! New evidence that old fossils (some discovered in 1974) represent the oldest Homo erectus in eastern Africa and the oldest postcranial fossils of H. erectus in Africa. Our lab helped lead author Ashley Hammond and other colleagues contextualize the environment of this ~1.89 million year old hominin using enamel isotopes. The H. erectus fossils were found among fossils of grazing mammals that occupied open habitats, linking Homo to grassy ecosystems.
October 21, 2020 . New Paper Alert! In a huge collaborative effort, scientists from all over the world worked to reconstruct the climate, environment, and water history of the Olorgesailie Basin from a sediment drill core over the last one million years. We sought to understand the environment in which our Homo ancestors lived, and found that adaptations such as new Middle Stone Age technology, long- distance obsidian transfer, pigmentation use, and even the first appearance of our species, Homo sapiens, occurred during extreme environmental instability. Multi-proxy reconstructions show that this environmental and resource instability was likely caused by the co-occurrence of dramatic climate changes and basin and slope changes caused by tectonism. -R. Lupien
October 19, 2020. Kevin gave a 10 minute talk for Lamont’s Open House on climate change, human evolution, and how we’ve dealt with it in the past (spoiler: we adapted)! You can see the talk here.
October 12, 2020. New Paper Alert! What can isotopes in elephant tusks tell us? Find out in our new paper—the final pub from Kevin’s PhD (2012, OMG!). Free access for 50 days at: https://bit.ly/36VbQ8N . We measured years of diet and body water changes at weekly resolution using ivory and hair isotopes from a wild elephant. We assessed ivory and hair growth rates multiple ways. Gerard Schuster helped us develop a way to predict plant productivity (NDVI) from carbon isotopes and vice versa with a clever least squares inverse filter. Now imagine predicting NDVI and seasonal rainfall in the Plio-Pleistocene from tusks!
September 25, 2020. We are part of a BIG group of scientists that just received a NSF-FRES award to study the interactions between climate, tectonics, and evolution in the Miocene in the Turkana Basin. The Turkana Miocene Project kicks off in January and you can read about it here. Our lab will be hiring a postdoc for this project so lookout for a posting soon!
September 10, 2020. New Paper Alert! Stony Brook University graduate student Deming Yang has a new paper out on seasonality of precipitation recorded in warthog teeth. He used modern warthogs, some from Mpala Research Centre, combined with MRC rainfall records, to show that canines and molars both record arrival and cessation of the rains. He also applied an inverse model to recover the full amplitude of oxygen isotope change associated with seasonality, as we did with elephants in the paper published on September 3rd (see below). Congrats Deming!!
September 3, 2020. We published a new paper “Forward and inverse methods for extracting climate and diet information from stable isotope profiles in proboscidean molars” that uses enamel isotopes, histology, and modeling to better quantify climate and dietary reconstructions from teeth. These methods are WIDELY applicable: fossil mammoth and elephant teeth are found on nearly all continents going back ~6 million years!
August 17, 2020. Rachel has a new paper out! “Abrupt climate change and its influences on hominin evolution during the early Pleistocene in the Turkana Basin, Kenya” is yet another great product from her PhD work at Brown.
August 3, 2020. Our lab is on fire... kind of! Our group received a NSF-BCS award to fund our collaborative study with George Washington University and other colleagues to study fire and human evolution. The project, titled Collaborative Research: Examining Pyrotechnology and Ecosystem Change in the Archaeological Record, will take us to the east side of Lake Turkana where we will use PAHs to investigate whether Homo erectus was using fire at ~1.6 Ma.
April 9, 2020. The Center for Climate and Life profiled a project I started on Abrupt Climate Change in Africa. I am working with Paul Sereno at University of Chicago and colleagues to understand how climate change affected humans and animals at an archeological site in Niger called Gobero, located in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
March 24, 2020. A new book chapter is out on the Stable Isotope Paleoecology of the Baynunah Formation from the Late Miocene of Abu Dhabi. This is part of a monograph, Sands of Time, on this fantastic fossil locality. A big thanks to collaborator and co-author Faysal Bibi! We find evidence for a strong monsoon at ~7 Ma from intratooth isotope profiles in fossil horse teeth.
February 27, 2020. Today I received official news that I have received a NSF CAREER award! The project includes five years of funding to investigate the origin of grassland ecosystems in eastern Africa. We will develop new biomarker approaches to determine woody cover and grass abundance in the geologic record. I will also develop a short course in Kenya for graduate students, postdocs and early career faculty to learn modern and paleoecology lab and field methods!
February 18, 2020. I arrived in Nairobi today and depart in a few days for Mpala Research Centre where I will teach Terrestrial Paleoecology as part of the Princeton-Columbia program Tropical Biology and Sustainability in Kenya. I’ll be joined Lamont postdoc Rachel Lupien who will TA the course.