This article is from page 27 of the 2014-05-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 27 JPG
PRESIDENT Michael D. Higgins and Nobel Prize winner Svante Pääbo will participate in a three day event organised by the Burren and Cliffs of Moher Geopark.
The three-day symposium, which taking place in NUI Galway and the Burren this week, will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the naming of Neanderthal by Irish scientist William King.
Delegates attending the symposium, which is entitled ‘From Fossils to the Genome’, will attend a field trip to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher Geopark.
William King’s proposal was to formally designate Neanderthal people as a separate species from ourselves. His suggestion was both extraordinary and revolutionary for its time – Charles Darwin’s masterpiece ‘Origin of Species’ had been published just five years beforehand. William King remains the first to name a new fossil human species, a privilege afforded to very few scien- tists.
The symposium will also feature a presentation from a Nobel Prize winner and one of TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people, Svante Pääbo.
Professor Pääbo, Director of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig and the first person to sequence the DNA of Neanderthal people, will deliver the main keynote address of the symposium.
Next Monday, participants will take part in a post conference field trip through the Burren led by Christine Grant of the National Monuments Service, Michael Lynch and Michelle Comber, the Field Director for the Caherconnell Archaeology Field School.
NUI Galway’s Dr John Murray and Geopark Geologist Dr Eamon Doyle will be discussing the geology of the Burren.
“Professor King’s work represents a scientific milestone in the history of our understanding of human origins,” said Dr Murray.