Owen Lovejoy

Claude Owen Lovejoy (born February 11, 1943), credited in publications as C. Owen Lovejoy, is an American evolutionary anthropologist and anatomist at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. He is best known for his work on Australopithecine locomotion and the origins of bipedalism. His article, "The Origin of Man", published in the journal Science in January 1981, is among his best-known works. During this time Lovejoy has published more than 100 articles related to his research, including for general interest magazines as well as professional journals, such as Science, Nature, Bioessays and Scientific American.

Lovejoy is most well known for his work on reconstructing Lucy (Australopithecus)—a near-complete fossil of a human ancestor that walked upright more than three million years ago. His research has covered a broad spectrum of human biological areas from eukaryotic mutations to ectocranial suture closures. Much of Lovejoy's research focuses on bipedal locomotion and its evolution. Many of his publications involve the thorough study of specific features of the hominid skeletal system or that of its ancestors. Often described as an anatomist, he is an adjunct professor of anatomy at Northeast Ohio Medical University (formerly known as the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine)

In addition, he is part of a team that has conducted 17 years of biological analysis of Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus) a near-complete 4.4-million-year-old hominid fossil found in present-day Ethiopia. Publication of a special issue of Science in October 2009 about this research demonstrated that hominid history was nearly one million years older than believed, and provided new information on the evolution of human limbs and locomotion, the habitats occupied by early hominids, and the nature of our last common ancestor with chimps.

Lovejoy has been active in paleodemography and human origins modeling. He has theorized that upright walking was closely tied to monogamous mating in early hominids (Provisioning Model).

Interested in general education, Lovejoy has used a variety of venues to teach about science. Through consulting on television productions, he has reached large audiences. For instance, he worked with PBS on their 1997 NOVA special on human evolution. In 2007, Lovejoy was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Publications Among the publications by Lovejoy are the following: