Elen Feuerriegel

Elen Feuerriegel is an Australian palaeoanthropologist, known for being one of the "underground astronauts" of the Rising Star Expedition. She is also a clinical research scientist at the University of Colorado Denver where she specialises in COVID-19 and HIV clinical trials.

Career Feuerriegel studied anthropology at the University of Queensland (BA, 2011) and the Australian National University (M. Biol. Anth, 2012). She then began work on a PhD at ANU, under the supervision of Colin Groves, which she completed in 2017. Her thesis was on the biomechanics of the hominoid shoulder and its role in tool-making (flint knapping), and included research on Homo naledi fossils from Rising Star Cave in South Africa. As part of the expedition Feuerriegel helped excavate the fossils, which were subsequently assigned to a new species of human, Homo naledi. She has a special interest in the functional morphology of the upper limb (shoulder and elbow) and hand and, as such, also studied the Home naledi upper limb bones.

Selected publications