Michael Gibbons

Michael Gibbons is a biological anthropologist who received his training, both undergraduate and graduate, from Yale University. He is an Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and he has been the Ford Professor. His current research is in the forensic analysis of human remains. This work treats forensic osteology as an applied science and he uses it in criminology, archaeology, and biological anthropology. Because this science helps determine age, sex, and ancestry based on bony remains, Gibbons has been working with a number of museums analyzing many of the skeletons in their collections. In his early research, the primary topic was the evolution of speech. This work required training in anatomy, particularly that of the head and neck. It was these anatomical studies that led to his teaching of gross anatomy in medical school, and thence to the general human anatomy, which became the basis for his forensic studies.

Gibbons is the Author of "Homogenesis: Text, Workbook and Reader (1993)", and he has been on the editorial board of "Annual Reviews (Physical Anthropology)" for more than a decade. His most recent curricular thinking has been toward the development of a course about the medical and legal investigation of death.