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My name is Zoe Jacobs, and I am an undergraduate student at Cal Poly Humboldt majoring in archaeology, minoring in geology, and obtaining a certificate of study in museum and gallery practices. I have also been working at the Natural History Museum of Cal Poly Humboldt for two years and am honored to work at such a wonderful educational institution. As part of an internship project, I am collaborating with the Anthropology Department and Natural History Museum (Director, Julie Van Sickle) on the exhibit “Hominins: Past and Present” at the Natural History Museum. This exhibit has been at the museum since we opened in 1989 and has periodically been updated when new information has arisen, but the last changes were made nearly 10 years ago. While working at the museum, I have overheard many conversations about the hominin exhibit in which guests seem to struggle to understand some of the concepts as they are currently displayed. I hope to update this exhibit with current information and make it more accessible for guests who have no background knowledge of paleoanthropology, including children, who make up a large demographic of museum visitors.

I was inspired to provide this exhibit with more recent information by a course I took on paleoanthropology, taught by Dr. Marissa Ramsier, with whom I am working closely on this project. It opened my eyes to the complexities of the evolution of hominins and the political minutia of the scientific community. Paleoanthropology is a relatively young field and has grown exponentially within the last few decades. With each new fossil found comes new theories, analyses, and debates about the course of human evolution. It’s difficult to stay current when the material changes so frequently, but the museum aims to make the exhibit as accurate as possible to the current studies and known fossils. I plan to work with the Natural History Museum leadership and anthropology department to update information that is no longer considered accurate and to add new fossil casts, interactive elements, charts, and maps that make the information more digestible. Some skull casts that I hope to add are: Australopithecus boisei, an updated Homo habilis, Homo naledi, and Australopithecus sediba.

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