Dr. Briana Pobiner – What can cut marks tell us about human evolution, migration, and behavior?

Dr. Briana Pobiner of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Human Origins Program joins the show to talk about cut marks. She discusses how we can tell what's a cut mark vs. other bone damage and how cut marks can illuminate human evolution along with illustrating migration and behavioral patterns in the distant past.

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• Dr. Pobiner's NMNH staff profile
• Dr. Pobiner's Google Scholar profile
• W.A. Barr, B. Pobiner, J. Rowan, A. Du, & J.T. Faith. (2022). No sustained increase in zooarchaeological evidence for carnivory after the appearance of Homo erectus, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119 (5) e2115540119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2115540119.
• Keevil TL, Pelissero AJ, Negash T, Orlikoff ER, Osborne I, Tolley AM, Pobiner B and Pante MC. (2026). A comparative bone surface modification database for revealing the origins and evolution of human carnivory. Front. Ecol. Evol. 14:1681814. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2026.1681814
• Pobiner, B., Pante, M. & Keevil, T. (2023). Early Pleistocene cut marked hominin fossil from Koobi Fora, Kenya. Sci Rep 13, 9896. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35702-7
• Egeland, C., Pobiner, B., Merritt, S., & Kunitz, S. (2024). Actualistic butchery studies in zooarchaeology: Where we've been, where we are now, and where we want to go. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 73. 10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101565.
• Curran, S.C., Drăgușin, V., Pobiner, B. et al. Hominin presence in Eurasia by at least 1.95 million years ago. Nat Commun 16, 836 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56154-9
• Pobiner, B., Curran, S., and Drãgușin, V. (2025). Tiny cut marks on animal bone fossils reveal that human ancestors were in Romania 1.95 million years ago. The Conversation. https://doi.org/10.64628/AAI.vxf9wp6jy
• Pobiner, B. (2016). Meat-Eating Among the Earliest Humans. American Scientist. 104 (2).
• The Bear (TV show)
• Miller, L. (2021). Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life. Simon & Schuster.