Sergio Almécija

Sergio Almécija

Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont

Humanities

2000: I started a degree in Biology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I wanted to learn about the natural world. The same year, I fell in love with paleontological fieldwork.
 
2006: I started my PhD at the now Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont. The mission: Understanding the functional morphology and evolution of the ape hand, leading to the emergence of complex tool behaviors in humans.
 
2010: I started my postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History (New York City). Since then, I also worked at various prestigious US institutions (Stony Brook University, The George Washington University), growing my international collaborative network of multidisciplinary, incredible colleagues.
 
2025: I joined ICREA to continue developing my research within the Catalan and European community.
Besides specialized papers, I have published in some of the top general sciences journals (e.g., Science, Nature Communications, and PNAS), where I share broader perspectives.

Research interests

Human evolution. I study human origins within the broader context of ape evolution. I focus on the time when our earliest ancestors first diverged from apes towards the end of the Miocene ~7 million years ago. To accomplish this mission, I enlist different lines of evidence:
Evolutionary phenomics. I am applying various analytical approaches (3D morphometrics, phylogenetic inference, evolutionary modeling) to the holistic study of organismic evolution from a deep-time perspective (including extinct and living species, especially humans and other primates). Now, I’d like to predict the future!
Functional morphology. My colleagues and I apply motion capture tools to study the locomotion of wild animals in their natural environments. These data will allow us to predict locomotion in fossil species.
Media science. My efforts range from publishing popular books to participating in documentaries, podcasts, and news articles, or designing a 3D virtual fossil exhibit for a museum.

Selected publications

– Post NW, Hammond AS, Pugh KD, Almécija S & Catalano SA 2025 ‘How does the number of landmarks impact geometric morphometric-based phylogenetic analysis?’. In: European Society for the Study of Human Evolution Meeting. Paris. Abstracts Book p 180.
– Syeda S, Almécija S, Hammond AS 2025 ‘Phalangeal cortical bone ontogeny reflects differences in age-related locomotor loading in African apes’. In: European Society for the Study of Human Evolution Meeting. Paris. Abstracts Book p. 218.

Selected research activities

Setting up a new research group
Currently, I’m setting up my research group “Evolutionary Phenomics” at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology. Besides working on targeted recruiting of specific junior researchers and technicians, I also worked with two potential postdocs, writing their projects for different calls (MSCA and Beatriu de Pinós).
Large-scale hominoid phenomics
My team and I are in the midst of developing and wrapping up various projects focused on large-scale phenomic data to better understand ape and human evolution.