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Walker receives Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award

Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Biology Credit: Penn State / Penn State. Creative Commons

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Alan Walker, Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Biology was awarded the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

Established in 1992, the award recognizes and honors distinguished senior members of the AAPA. Walker receives the award for the prominence his work has brought to physical anthropology through spectacular fossil finds and methodological developments. It also celebrates his generosity of spirit in continually sharing ideas.

Walker's work is instrumental in understanding primates, particularly Oligocene and Miocene apes and Plio-Pleistocene hominids. His work helped in interpreting locomotion from the shape of limbs and inner ears, primate diets from tooth enamel scratches and how development contributes to the shape of the head and face.

The author of "Nariokotome Homo Erectus Skeleton" with Richard Leaky, Walker is also coauthor with Pat Shipman of "The Human Skeleton," and "The Wisdom of the Bones: In Search of Human Origins."

Walker joined Penn State in 1995 and was named Distinguished Professor in 1996. He became Evan Pugh Professor in 2002 and retired with emeritus status in 2010.

Last Updated July 28, 2017

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