FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A University of Arkansas postdoctoral student has won a Humboldt Fellowship to continue his examination of the prehistoric environmental changes that led to the disappearance of great apes from Europe 9 million years ago.

Gildas Merceron received the research fellowship for his reconstruction of the habitat of a fossil ape in Central Europe.

“The Humboldt Fellowship is the most prestigious fellowship of its kind,” said Peter Ungar, a professor of anthropology in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

Merceron’s research project aims to characterize the environments and evolution of environments in Central Europe where Dryopithecus, a fossilized great ape, evolved between 12 and 9 million years ago. Understanding which environmental changes took place will hopefully explain why all fossil apes disappeared from Europe 9 million years ago.

“Reconstructing the habitats and diets of primates from the large human and apes lineage is an essential issue to better understand apes and human evolution,” Merceron said.

Dryopithecus fossils have been found in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Dryopithecus had a semierect posture and is generally thought to be ancestral to modern apes and man.

“Merceron’s research is able to give us a very in-depth and important glimpse of what life was like for our ancestors millions of years ago,” Ungar said.

To reconstruct the landscapes in which Dryopithecus lived, Merceron will reconstruct the dietary contexts of these other herbivorous mammals that inhabited the same areas of the fossilized great ape.

“If we know these mammals foraged on leaves from trees or grazed on ground vegetation, we can reconstruct the landscape as an open savannah with grass-like plants or an evergreen forest with many trees and bushes,” Merceron said.

Merceron reconstructs fossilized species’ feeding preferences by using dental microwear analysis, a method of analyzing tooth shape and wear patterns in relation to food consumption. Through this analysis, Merceron will be able to determine whether the mammals ate fruits, grasses or tree leaves.

Merceron researches with Ungar using a geographic information system to model the surfaces of fossilized teeth as though they were landscapes. By studying the wear patterns on a species' teeth, researchers can make inferences about the foods that comprised the species' main diet.

 “Using my Ph.D. background and my competence about dental microwear analysis I acquired with Dr. Ungar, I will be able to better characterize feeding habits of fossil antelopes, gazelles, deer and giraffes,” Merceron said.

“We are very fortunate to have him in our department where he is able to develop his research technique with the unmatched technology that we have here,” Ungar said.

In the spring, Merceron will begin researching in the department of zoology at the University of Hamburg, Germany, for 12 months.

Currently, Merceron is concluding one year of postdoctoral research in the Fulbright College’s department of anthropology.  He will then be a research associate in the Laboratoire de Géobiologie, Bichronologie et Paléontologie Humaine in Poitiers, France.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is a non-profit foundation established by the Federal Republic of Germany for the promotion of international research cooperation. Humboldt Fellowships enable highly qualified scholars not living in Germany to spend extended periods of research in Germany. More than 20,000 scholars from 125 countries have been sponsored to date.

To learn more about the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, visit http://www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/.