Dr Marine Cazenave

Dr Marine Cazenave is a paleoanthropologist working on the adaptative and functional evolution of the postcranial skeleton of fossil hominins (species more closely related to us than to any other living taxon including, therefore, our ancestors), with a particular interest on reconstructing their locomotor-related biomechanical environment. 

Dr Cazenave completed her Master's degree (MSc) at the University of Toulouse in 2015 and received her PhD, co-directed between the University of Toulouse, France, and the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in October 2018. 

After a year as Research Assistant at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Pretoria, Marine joined the School of Anthropology and Conservation in January 2019 as a Fyssen Foundation Postdoctoral Research fellow. She is investigating the internal structure of the pelvis in South African fossil hominins, in comparison to modern humans and extant apes, in order to disentangle the loading environment(s) that have acted on the hip joint and the variation in bipedal biomechanics during hominin evolution. 

Dr Cazenave’s research focuses on the biological interpretation of the inner structural arrangement of the postcranial skeleton (i.e. trabecular and cortical bones) in extant and fossil primates. As the bony internal structure has the ability to adjust to the loading environments and therefore to record relevant biomechanical information during life, Marine's research is developed to assess, in an evolutionary perspective, the dynamic interactions of the individual-biomechanical environment. 

For the extraction of data, Dr Cazenave makes use of advanced, non-invasive techniques of high-resolution virtual imaging and digital processing to assess, on a comparative basis, cortical and cancellous structures.