Sarah Freidline

Dr. Sarah Freidline is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida (UCF), part of the College of Sciences. Her research focuses on paleoanthropology, specifically the evolution and development of human craniofacial morphology. She employs state-of-the-art methods including geometric morphometrics and surface histology to study fossil hominins, reconstructing virtual fossils and analyzing growth patterns in species like Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and modern humans.

Dr. Freidline holds a Ph.D. from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany (2012). She served as a postdoctoral researcher at MPI-EVA's Department of Human Evolution until 2020. Her work addresses critical questions about the evolutionary origins of modern human facial features, integrating macroscopic and microscopic analyses to explore intraspecific variation and developmental processes.

Her research highlights include developing novel 3D methods for quantifying bone histology, studying facial gracilization in hominids, and reconstructing Middle/Late Pleistocene fossils from Northern Africa and Southeast Asia. She currently supervises a PhD project on mandibular evolution and collaborates on projects like the Tam Pà Ling cave in Laos, which provides evidence of early Homo sapiens presence in Southeast Asia.

Key grants and collaborations involve international partnerships with institutions like MPI-EVA and fieldwork initiatives. Dr. Freidline's lab focuses on computational paleoanthropology, combining advanced imaging techniques with evolutionary theory to reconstruct human origins.