Colin Peter Groves - Emeritus Professor, bioanthropology

Abstract

This interview with Colin Peter Groves of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, is part of the ANU Emeritus Faculty's Oral History Program. Colin has done museum work on primates and other mammals all over the world. His lifelong studies on classification, variation and evolution of living primates culminated in 2001 with the publication of a book Primate Taxonomy (Smithsonian Institution Press), but it continues with new discoveries and new assessments. He is regularly invited to address conferences on this and related subjects, including the Goettingen Freilandtage (an annual conference of primatologists in Germany) in December, 2005, the African Genesis symposium in Johannesburg in January, 2006, the International Primatological Congress in Cancun in 2012, and the International Conference on Ruminant Systematics and Evolution in Munich in 2014.

I is also still publishing on human evolution (a recent paper with a Debbie Argue, Bill Jungers and Mike Lee on the infamous Hobbit, Homo floresiensis), and on the taxonomy of ungulates and other animals, including elephants and carnivores. Biogeography is an increasingly important theme in his research, giving clues to reconstruction of past climates and geography.

His work has taken him to such places as Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, India, Iran, China and Indonesia. In the past few years he has also done fieldwork in Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He regularly collaborates in research with colleagues in Europe, China and Sri Lanka, among other places, although much of his research is sole-authored.

(https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/groves-cp)