Dr. Ashley Hammond's Research

Dr. Ashley S. Hammond

Dr. Ashley S. Hammond is the Curator of Biological Anthropology in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. She is also a faculty member in the Richard Gilder Graduate School and an adjunct professor at the City University of New York.

Hammond's research focuses on the discovery, description, and analysis of new fossil primates - especially hominins - from East Africa. In particular, her research is works towards understanding the locomotor adaptations present in the earliest hominins by combining paleontological discovery, dissection-based study, 3D morphometrics, and evolutionary modeling. Her research has provided insights into the locomotor skeleton of such diverse species as Aegytopithecus, Oreopithecus, Homo erectus, and the earliest Homo sapiens. Hammond's paleontological field research is concentrated in Kenya, including Miocene sites (Lemudong'o Formation) and Plio-Pleistocene-aged deposits (Koobi Fora Formation). She works closely scientists and students through collaborations with the National Museums of Kenya.