William H. Kimbel
Ph.D., Kent State University, 1986
Professor
Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment
Director, Institute of Human Origins
Email: wkimbel.iho@asu.edu
Physical Anthropology
Kimbel, who moved to ASU with the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) in 1997, is Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment in the Department of Anthropology and Science Director of the IHO. He conducts field, laboratory, and theoretical research in paleoanthropology, with primary foci on Plio-Pleistocene hominid evolution in Africa and the late Pleistocene of the Middle East.
Recent field work has taken Kimbel to the Hadar hominid site in Ethiopia, where he has co-directed paleoanthropological research since 1990, and to northern Israel, where he has collaborated with Israeli colleagues on the excavation of Middle Paleolithic cave deposits. His lab-oriented interests are in the evolution of hominid skull morphology and function, variation and systematics, and the concept of the species as applied to paleoanthropological problems. Since 1989 Kimbel has been Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on eight National Science Foundation and other research grants totaling $775,000.
Kimbel is Joint Editor of Journal of Human Evolution.
ASU courses taught by Kimbel include "Fossil Hominids," an upper division undergraduate survey of the fossil evidence for human evolution; "Primate Paleobiology," graduate seminar (team-taught with Prof. Kaye Reed) ; and "Paleoanthropology," also a graduate seminar.
In 2003 Kimbel mentored his first Ph.D. student, Shara Bailey, who completed a dissertation entitled " Neandertal Dental Morphology: Implications for Modern Human Origins".
In the Department of Anthropology, Kimbel served as Director of Graduate Studies from 1999-2003.