He is generally agreed to be the most successful fossil hominid hunter in the world (see the box article about him on pp. 389-390 in Jurmain). He has had two fossil primates named after him:
Important fossils he has discovered:
In 1977 he became the Kenya National Museum's curator for all prehistoric sites in Kenya. During the dry season he directs surveys, including all of the major ones at Koobi Fora, and during the rest of the year he oversees all of the National Museum's extension sites.
These may seem like remarkable accomplishments for a young African tribesman. Why should this be? Why did Kimeu think early on that only white men could find fossils?
Kenya was a European colony for most of the four and a half centuries before independence in 1963. For all that Louis Leakey felt more Kenyan than British, and was an adopted Kikuyu, he commanded the respect of any other European in Kenya.
As a European he had access to resources for fossil hunting that were denied Kimeu or any other native Kenyan who may have wanted to. Indeed, Kenya is fortunate that the Leakeys felt a stronger tie to Kenya than to England; fossils found by Europeans in other countries were removed, but Kenyan fossils have remained in Kenya.
As a discipline, paleoanthropology is very white. Although Kimeu and the other Kenyan surveyors are responsible for most of the discoveries, few have had formal paleoanthropological training.
The requirements of academic apprenticeship serve to exclude the Kenyan researchers from the exclusive group of elite paleoanthropologists and the recognition they may receive.
Studied under Sherwood Washburn and Robert J. Braidwood.
He recognized early the need for multidisciplinary research projects from the planning stages.
He was also an early popularizer of paleoanthropology, writing Early Man for Time/Life in 1965. This was significant synthesis at a time when most popular paleoanthropology was presented either piecemeal, as with National Geographic articlesabout the Leakeys' discoveries, or in technically-inaccurate books such as those by Robert Ardrey.
1959 -- First expedition, to the Omo valley in southwestern Ethiopia.
Confusion over
collecting permissions led to confiscation of specimens by Ethopian customs officials; this was a
severe setback. He did not return to the Omo for several years.
1961 -- Torralba, Spain (NE of Madrid). Homo erectus, apparently, in Spain 400 kya, hunted game (including elephants) by lighting fires and herding animals into swamps, where they were killed. However, no hominid fossils were found, so the identification of the makers is unclear. Careful plotting of artifacts during excavation led to production of a 3D map of the site; palynological, zoological, geological data collected.
1966 -- Returned to Omo at behest of Haile Selassie. As usual, he didn't find much in the way of hominids -- mostly a few isolated teeth. But he did develop a detailed stratigraphic sequence, especially important for the precise dating of the biostratigraphic developments. This had significant implications for the KBS tuff controversy beginning in 1971.
The KBS tuff was a layer of volcanic material discovered by Richard Leakey at Lake
Rudolf, in Kenya, during a spin-off project of Howell's second Omo project.
K/Ar dating of the
tuff returned a date of 2.61 million years -- but the biostratigraphy was found to be inconsistent
with this dating.
For several years in the early 1970s, African paleoanthropology was divided by
disagreement over the dating of the tuff. In the end, careful biostratigraphic analysis of the sort
done by Howell at Omo was instrumental in resolving the dispute.
With J. Desmond Clark, Howell has also been active in studying modern hunter-gatherers as analogues for early hominid behavior.
Receive his Ph.D. from U Illinois - Urbana, 1969. Has taught at U Michigan since 1970.
With C. Loring Brace, Wolpoff was a long-time proponent of the single species' hypothesis of human evolution -- the idea that there was only one hominid species living at any given time -- in contrast to the multiple species,' or bush,' hypothesis. However, the overwhelming evidence of new fossils and dates in the past twenty-five years has effectively crushed the single-species hypothesis.
Ironically, he is now best known for his support of the multiregional hypothesis for the emergence of Homo sapiens, in contrast to the generally-accepted out of Africa' replacement theory. When recent DNA tests on Neandertal material suggested that Neandertals had a substantial genetic difference from modern humans, Wolpoff was an early and strong critic of the evolutionary significance of the findings.
Wolpoff is also known for the "Wolpoff hypothesis." This was a model for the emergence of later Homo species from Homo habilis which was based almost entirely on hunting. In this model, the biomechanical -- particularly craniofacial -- and cultural changes seen in Homo erectus and, later, Homo sapiens can be attributed to selective pressures imposed by a hunting adaptation. In part, this may be attributed to the cultural biases prevalent during his training. In addition to the lack of physical evidence -- which may be a lack in principle -- this model has been critiqued on the basis of the overbearing androcentrism implicit to it.
1977 -- with Ashley Montague, suggested alternative evolutionary development of light skin: cold temps require clothing; with clothing, selective advantage of dark skin removed; drift primarily responsible for shift to light skin.