Diet plays a critical role in the evolution of animals, as can we see in the beak shape of Darwin's finches. But, what is the role of diet in our own evolution? Can our evolutionary history tell us what humans should eat? And how can we know what our ancestors ate? Dr. Nicole Burt will present on her current research into human diet and how methods such as stable isotope analysis can help reconstruct past diets.
Location: New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
Health & Social Sciences Auditorium RM 101
Date: February 14, 2020
Time: 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm
Everyone is welcome! Faculty, Staff, Students, the community
*Food will not be served
From cmnh.org:
Nicole M Burt, Ph.D.
Curator of Human Health & Evolutionary Medicine
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Dr. Nicole Burt is a biological anthropologist with expertise in analyzing teeth and bone to reconstruct dietary patterns in children. Her work has yielded information about breastfeeding and weaning patterns in ancient and modern human populations.
The technique she uses, called stable isotope analysis, distinguishes the ratio of heavy to light stable isotopes—that is, forms of these elements that have the same atomic number but a different number of neutrons—in a sample. These ratios reflect what an individual’s dietary makeup was in life. Burt developed the particular microsampling method she uses as a graduate student.
By analyzing isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, Burt can reconstruct what a person ate—more corn than wheat, or more fish than pork, for example. In infants, breastfeeding and weaning patterns are preserved in their teeth that allow Burt to determine when a child was weaned and what he or she ate afterward. She is even able to discern what the child’s mother ate during pregnancy.
Burt’s work at the Museum, which began in August 2014, combines her educational background in biological and forensic anthropology with her abiding love of museums. She is building on the legacy of the Museum’s 2007 merger with HealthSpace Cleveland by reaching out to connect with the area’s medical community as she establishes her own research project.
Burt is organizing a long-term research study examining the effects of maternal choices about breastfeeding and weaning on infant and maternal health. Her goal is to gather data that can be used to engage communities in Cleveland in conversations about ways to optimize maternal and child health.
Another of Burt’s duties is to shape content for a new permanent gallery that focuses on human health and evolutionary medicine. Rather than recount a history of medicine or focus on health in the clinical sense, it will explain how human health has been, and continues to be, shaped by the influences of genetics, environment, and culture. This is a truly unique feature in a natural history museum—one of only three such galleries in the world.