Invited by Professor Guanghui Dong, Dr. Yiru Wang from the University of Edinburgh, UK will make an academic presentation titled “The Origin and Spread of Sheep Domestication—Exploration of Animal Archaeology Evidence and Research Methods”. Welcome!

Time: on Tuesday, October 15, 2019, at 10:30 a.m.

Site: Lecture room 501, Qiliantang, Lanzhou University

Lecturer profile

Dr. Wang is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. She obtained her Ph.D. and M.Sc. from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor of Science in Archaeology and History (double degree) from Peking University. She has conducted fieldworks extensively in western China, the UK, and Europe. Her reputation can be attributed to her activities abroad, which enabled cooperation with renowned partner institutions at a high scientific level. Thus, Wang has received several fellowships from the University of Edinburgh, Cambridge University, the Winner Green Foundation of the United States, and the China Scholarship Fund. She has been engaging in research on thebone phenotypicchanges of domestic animals and the environment they adapt to aiming at revealing the complex interactions between animals and humans in a unique ecological and social environment. This lecture will introduce the research results in Wang’s doctoral period. By comparing the differences of numerous modern bonespecimens and systematically studying on bone morphology of these species, she established the standard for distinguishing wild subfamily and antelope subfamily. She current research is being conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of Edinburgh to study the phenotypic adaptation of sheep bones to the new environment during domestication using arithmetic geometry (GMM) techniques. That is a fundamental study of the biological mechanisms involved in the animal domestication and will provide the basis for further research on the globalization of livestock farming and food production.