Zewdi Tsegai
Assistant Professor
Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and the College
Zewdi Tsegai is a paleoanthropologist whose research is primarily focused on understanding the evolution of bipedalism and reconstructing locomotion among early fossil human relatives (hominins). Her laboratory analyzes skeletal morphology in combination with biomechanical studies to explore the functional morphology of the human and ape skeletons, and to reconstruct locomotor and tool use behavior of fossil hominins. This research is largely focused on understanding how behavior shapes the skeleton and how plastic features can be used to reconstruct locomotor behavior in the past. Key areas of her ongoing research include the functional morphology of the foot, how the skeleton changes during growth, and inter- and intra-specific variability in internal bone morphology.
Her research has been published in Journal of Anatomy, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and Science.
Tsegai earned a BA in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, and an MSc in human evolution and behavior from University College London. She received a PhD in biology from Leipzig University and completed postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellow at the University of Kent.