Tom Higham, Prof. Archaeological Science, University of Oxford
Thursday, 17 September 2015 from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
NOTE CHANGE OF TIME
Napier venue: Century Theatre, MTG, Herschell St, Napier
The Hawke’s Bay Branch of the Royal Society is delighted to be included in the Allan Wilson Centre’s 2015 International Lecture Series.
BOOKINGS:
To ensure a seat, go to:
www.allanwilsoncentre.ac.nz click ‘Register Online’ under ‘Events’.
Tom Higham will discuss the period from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago, which saw the final dispersal of moderns out of Africa, colonising the Old World and Australia, and the disappearance of Neanderthals from the areas they had occupied for 200,000 years. We now know through ancient DNA research that ancient modern humans and Neanderthals probably interbred prior to the wider dispersal of modern people.
Tom
is the Deputy Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, administers the Unit’s archaeological dating programmes and is secretary to the NERC – AHRC National Radiocarbon Facility advisory panel.
His research interests revolve around archaeological dating using AMS, radiocarbon AMS dating of bone, the chronology of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Europe, reservoir effects in 14C, the application of Bayesian calibration methods to archaeological dating, dating novel sample types and sample pretreatment chemistry.
Gary Sparks is President of the Hawke’s Bay Astronomical Society and Director of the Holt Planetarium in Napier.
Dr. Laura Wallace is a Research Scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. Prior to joining the University of Texas, Laura was a research scientist at GNS Science in Lower Hutt for nearly a decade.
Jeffery Tallon CNZM, FRSNZ, HonFIPENZ is Professor of Physics at Robinson Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington. He is internationally known for his research and discoveries in high-temperature superconductors (HTS), both fundamental and applied, leading eventually to commercialization through the company HTS-110 Ltd. His research has focused on the thermodynamics, magnetism, spectroscopy and electronic transport properties of superconductors.
Palaeontologist and writer Dr Phil Manning is Professor of Natural History at the University of Manchester and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre of Ancient Life. Phil has appeared in and presented many television documentaries for the BBC, Discovery and History Channels, and is currently filming two new documentaries to be released later this year.
Paleontology is the science of fossils. Like all science, it is concerned with discovery and interpretation of the world (and universe) around us. For paleontology, that discovery starts in the layers of rock exposed on mountainsides and in river beds, where we find fossils that have been preserved and hidden for millions to hundreds of millions of years. Fossils are an incredible source of knowledge and understanding: from them we learn about the unique history of life on this planet, the wonderful coincidence of conditions that makes life possible, and the terrifying events that have destroyed life. We also learn about climate change, sea-level rise, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the fossil fuels that sustain our society. In this talk I will try to convey the excitement (and hazards!) of initial fossil discovery, and then give a tour through the sorts of scientific discoveries that follow.
