User:Brian F. Kuhn
The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.
Born in Seattle Washington, USA in 1967, Brian was raised just north of the city and
finished his primary education in 1985. He began his college career at Shoreline
Community College and after attending a study tour of East Africa transferred to
Washington State University in 1988 where he majored in Zoology. He earned his BS in
Zoology in December of 1990, and stayed on for one more semester and earned a BA in
Anthropology in May of 1991. During his final year as an undergraduate Brian
conducted research under the tutelage of Professor Ken Kardong on behaviour and
morphology of both rattle snakes (Crotalus oreganus) and boomslangs (Dispholidus
typus), said research on rattle snakes was presented at the annual meetings of the
American Society of Zoologists in 1990 and subsequently published in 1991.
In 1994 he accepted a two-year position with the Peace Corps of the United States in Morocco as a volunteer working in health and sanitation projects. In addition he aided other volunteers conducting faunal surveys of the Eastern High Atlas Mountains. Upon completion of service in 1996 he was recommended to be part of the first group of volunteers going to Jordan in 1997. His time in Jordan was spent working with the Arabian Oryx (Oryx leucoryx) reintroduction program based at the Shaumari Nature Reserve south of Azraq. In addition he worked closely with the Friends of Environment NGO on their environmental education program. After just over a year with Peace Corps in Jordan Brian decided to leave and pursue other interests.
In 2000 he moved to London and attended the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. In 2001 he earned his Masters degree in Palaeoecology, with an emphasis on Zooarchaeology. His studies included a self-designed field project/thesis on the bone collecting of striped hyaenas (Hyaena hyaena) and its archaeological significance. The results of this research were published in 2005. After a long discussion about how to proceed with this project at the doctoral level, it was decided that Brian should move to the University of Pretoria, South Africa and work on his doctorate entitled ‘The Collecting Behaviour and Taphonomic Signatures of Hyaenids’ under the direct supervision of Professor John Skinner, with Professor Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand acting as a co-supervisor. Brian was awarded his PhD from the University of Pretoria in 2006. Currently Brian is working as a Post Doctoral Fellow with Professor Lee Berger at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Today Brian continues to study hyaenids in relation to bone collecting behaviour and taphonomy. In addition he is interested in how extant brown hyaenas (Parahyaena brunnea) and leopards (Panthera pardus) living within the same cave systems interact and how this behaviour may aid in interpreting palaeontological assemblages.