"The Paleo Diet: What our Ancestors Really Ate" will be the topic of a lecture by Paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner on Monday, April 6, at 4 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts at Coastal Carolina University. This event is free and open to the public.

Pobiner, who is a research scientist with the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution, will explore the Paleo Diet fad and what we know our distant ancestors ate based on archaeological and paleontological data. The lecture will feature Pobiner's work in Africa as a case study.

Pobiner has a bachelor's degree in evolutionary studies from Bryn Mawr College (1997), where she created her own major, and master's and doctoral degrees in anthropology from Rutgers University. Her research centers on the evolution of human diet (with a focus on meat-eating), but has included topics as diverse as cannibalism in the Cook Islands and chimpanzee carnivory. She has done fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Indonesia and has been supported in her research by the Fulbright-Hays program, the Leakey Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, Rutgers University, the Society for American Archaeology, the Smithsonian Institution and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

The Recital Hall is in room 152 of the Edwards Building, located at 133 Chanticleer Drive W. on the Conway campus. Parking is available behind the building or adjacent in Brittain Hall.

For more information, contact Carolyn Dillian at 843-349-2777 or cdillian@coastal.edu.