Nicole GRUNSTRA

I am an evolutionary anthropologist and morphometrician. I obtained a PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and am currently based at the Department of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Vienna as an ESPRIT fellow. I am interested in which sense the human lineage is unique and in which sense we are “just another unique species.” Central to my research, therefore, is placing human evolution in a wider comparative and theoretical biology context. I study complex traits such as the pelvis, cranium, inner ear, and the entire dentition. Currently, my main research focus is on the study of evolutionary trade-offs in the human and non-human placental mammalian pelvis in pursuit of understanding what constrains human pelvic canal size and flexibility, leading to a tight fit and difficult childbirth (an “obstetrical dilemma”). I lead an FWF-funded project devoted to this question, in which I aim to disentangle the relative contributions of reproduction, locomotion, posture, body mass support, and phylogenetic heritage in hard and soft tissue anatomy of the mammalian, including human, pelvis.