Agness Gidna

Agness Gidna is a Tanzanian paleontologist and a former Senior Curator of Paleontology at the National Museum of Tanzania. She is currently working with Ngorongoro Conservation Area as a Principal Cultural Heritage Officer. She is the first Tanzanian woman to hold a doctorate in Physical Anthropology and she is the first Tanzanian female research director at Olduvai Gorge, where she has been a co-principal investigator of the Olduvai Palaeoanthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP) since 2017. She is a founder of the largest Pastoral Neolithic site in sub-Saharan Africa-(Luxmanda Site). She is a co-director of International research projects e.g. the Olduvai Gorge Project.

As Senior Curator of Paleontology at the National Museum of Tanzania, she has organized and curated two major exhibitions about human origin in Olduvai Gorge Museum, founded by Mary Leakey, and the National Museum of Tanzania. She gave tours to Samia Suluhu Hassan, Vice President of Tanzania in 2017 during the inauguration of the new Olduvai Gorge museum and to Monica Chakwera, First Lady of Malawi.

Selected works

Domínguez-Rodrigo, M., Baquedano, E., Díez Martín, F., Bunn, H. T., Pickering, T. R., Musiba, C.... & Arriaza, M. D. C. (2012). La evolución conductual de los primeros Homo erectus (ergaster): estudio arqueológico y paleoecológico de los yacimientos antrópicos del lecho II de la Garganta de Olduvai: informe de la campaña de excavaciones en Olduvai. Año 2010.

Domínguez-Rodrigo, M., Bunn, H. T., Mabulla, A. Z., Baquedano, E., Uribelarrea del Val, D., Pérez-González, A.... & Egeland, C. P. (2013). Did Homo erectus consume a Pelorovis herd at BK (Bed II, Olduvai Gorge)?.