Tyler Faith

Tyler Faith is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah and Chief Curator at the Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU). He specializes in paleoecology, focusing on mammal extinctions, environmental change, and human-environment interactions in Africa over the past 7 million years. His work integrates anthropology, paleobiology, and geosciences, with over 100 peer-reviewed articles in top journals like Science, Nature, and PNAS.

Education:

• B.A. in Anthropology, University of Washington (2005)
• Ph.D. in Hominid Paleobiology, George Washington University (2011)

Research Themes:

• Human impacts on ecosystems: Investigates long-term human effects on biodiversity, particularly African mammal extinctions.
• Environmental change and human evolution: Uses fossil mammals to reconstruct paleoenvironments, highlighted in his 2019 book Paleozoology and Paleoenvironments.

Articles Trends: Recent work emphasizes Quaternary environmental dynamics, fire ecology, and genomic studies of extinct species like the blue antelope. His analyses often combine isotopic data, fossil records, and archaeological evidence to address anthropogenic and climatic drivers of ecological change.

Labs/Teams: Leads NHMU’s Sustaining Biodiversity initiative, collaborating on projects across Africa and North America. His research involves fieldwork in Kenya, South Africa, and Utah, with a focus on cave and sediment cores.