South African archaeologist and earth scientist
Zenobia Jacobs is a South African-born archaeologist and earth scientist specialising in geochronology. She is a professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia.[1]
Education and career
Jacobs graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, in 1998, studying archaeology and geography, and received her PhD from Aberystwyth University, Wales, in 2004.[citation needed] She joined the University of Wollongong as a research fellow in 2006 and is currently a professor in the Centre for Archaeological Science and the School of Earth of Environmental Sciences.[1] She is also an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage.[citation needed] She was awarded the International Union for Quaternary Research's Sir Nick Shackleton Medal in 2009.[2]
Jacobs' research traces the evolutionary history of humans using single-grain optically stimulated luminescence dating.[3][4] Her work on the Denisovans and Neanderthals has helped establish a timeline of when the two groups of archaic humans were present in southern Siberia and the environmental conditions they faced before going extinct.[5][6] She has also contributed to reconstructions of past environments in Africa,[7] using ancient high sea-levels as analogues for future trends,[8][clarification needed] and studies of the ecological footprint of the first humans to reach Australia[9] and Madagascar.[10]
