Matt Sponheimer

About

Matt Sponheimer conducts research on the ecology of early hominins and associated fauna in Africa. He has directed and co-directed several multi-disciplinary projects that have examined the ecology of living mammals, both large and small, in South Africa.

Research topics

• Ecology
• Biology
• Paleontology
• Geography
• Genetics
• Geology
• Evolutionary biology
• Business
• History
• Zoology

Selected publications

• Dietary trends in herbivores from the Shungura Formation, southwestern Ethiopia

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 49 citations

  , and has implications for key morphological and behavioral adaptations in our lineage.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Early dispersal of domestic horses into the Great Plains and northern Rockies

  Science · 2023 · 45 citations

  The horse is central to many Indigenous cultures across the American Southwest and the Great Plains. However, when and how horses were first integrated into Indigenous lifeways remain contentious, with extant models derived largely from colonial records. We conducted an interdisciplinary study of an assemblage of historic archaeological horse remains, integrating genomic, isotopic, radiocarbon, and paleopathological evidence. Archaeological and modern North American horses show strong Iberian ge…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Isotopic evidence for the timing of the dietary shift toward C ₄ foods in eastern African <i>Paranthropus</i>

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 43 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  grazing by cooccurring mammalian taxa from the same sequence. However, the timing and geographic patterns of hominin diets in this region differ from those observed elsewhere in the same basin, where environmental controls on the underlying availability of various food sources were likely quite different. These results highlight the complexities of dietary responses by hominins to changes in the availability of food resources.

  DOI

• A 41,500 year-old decorated ivory pendant from Stajnia Cave (Poland)

  Scientific Reports · 2021-11-25 · 24 citations

  articleOpen access

  Evidence of mobiliary art and body augmentation are associated with the cultural innovations introduced by Homo sapiens at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. Here, we report the discovery of the oldest known human-modified punctate ornament, a decorated ivory pendant from the Paleolithic layers at Stajnia Cave in Poland. We describe the features of this unique piece, as well as the stratigraphic context and the details of its chronometric dating. The Stajnia Cave plate is a personal 'jewell…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intrataxonomic trends in herbivore enamel δ13C are decoupled from ecosystem woody cover

  Nature Ecology & Evolution · 2021-05-03 · 24 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Rodent Diets and Habitat Reconstructions in South Africa: an Actualistic and Applied Multidisciplinary Study

  NSF · $87k · 2010–2012

• An Investigation of Early Hominin Land Use in and Around the Sterkfontein Valley Using Strontium Isotopes

  NSF · $139k · 2006–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Julia A. Lee‐Thorp

  158 shared

• Daryl Codron

  University of the Free State

  109 shared

• Jacqui Codron

  64 shared

• Darryl J. de Ruiter

  Texas A&M University

  63 shared

• Thure E. Cerling

  40 shared

• Benjamin H. Passey

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  32 shared

• Oliver Paine

  San Diego State University

  26 shared

• Amanda G. Henry

  Leiden University

  22 shared

Similar researchers at University of Colorado Boulder

• Scott Ortmanh-38
• Michelle Sautherh-35
• Sharon DeWitteh-34