Trevor Keevil

Trevor is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology and research assistant in the Laboratory for Computational-Anthropology and Anthroinformatics. His research investigates the role human hunters played in the Ice Age extinction of North and South American megafauna. He does this by examining the butchery marks ancient humans left on megafauna fossils, including mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths. His project uses high-resolution optical profilometry, geometric morphometrics, and Bayesian statistics to relate the shape of archaeological bone markings created by unknown agents to the shape of marks created during experimental trials, such as human butchery, carnivore feeding, and ungulate trampling. This research helps archaeologists more precisely identify when past humans hunted and butchered large mammals in the archaeological record.