Dr Ameline Bardo

Dr Ameline Bardo is a Biological Anthropologist and Primatologist working on the evolution of tool use and manipulation in primates as well as the emergence of the unique features of the human hand. She completed her PhD at the National Museum of Natural History (Paris) in November 2016, in which she looked at the evolution of the hand and manipulative abilities in great apes compared with humans. 

Dr Bardo started at the School in 2017 as a Fyssen Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on the project 'Evolution of human dexterity, precision grip and stone tool-making'. 

Currently, Ameline continues working on the evolution of human dexterity as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Biological Anthropology and is also the manager of the APE (Animal Postcranial Evolution) lab.

Dr Bardo's research applies an integrative and comparative behavioural, archaeological, morphological and biomechanical approach to better understand the evolution of hominid hands related to their form and function. Although her previous research demonstrated that the human hand is perhaps not as unique in its abilities as previously thought, this work has raised additional questions regarding the traditional understanding that the highly dexterous human hand and its distinct morphology evolved in response to stone tool-making. 

During Ameline's postdoctoral project on the evolution of human dexterity, she will test longstanding assumptions about the evolution of the human hand through a comparative primate approach, with the aim of identifying what makes the human hand distinct among primates.