Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Ancient DNA, Evolution, and Domestication

Tue, March 28, 2017
Lunch Program
Greger Larson '96

A canine DNA researcher—by way of a CMC education in environment, economics, and politics—Greger Larson will discuss how next generation DNA sequencing techniques are revolutionizing our understanding of human evolution and animal domestication, with a particular focus on the ancient ties between humans and dogs.

After graduating from CMC in 1996, Greger Larson spent a year in Central Asia on a Watson Fellowship before starting a job in the environmental consulting industry in Azerbaijan. Subsisting on a literary diet of Stephen J. Gould’s writings, he worked and wandered the deserts of Turkmenistan over the next three years.

Ultimately concluding that “evolution was cooler than oil,” Larson pursued his masters in archeology at Oxford University, continued further studies in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, and completed his Ph.D. in zoology at Oxford in 2006.

Larson is currently a professor at Oxford University where he uses ancient DNA to address a wide variety of questions about evolution, migration, and domestication. He also directs the Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network, also at Oxford University.

(He says that he rarely wonders what his salary would be had he stuck to oil.)

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

Claremont McKenna College
385 E. Eighth Street
Claremont, CA 91711

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