Draft:Yoel Rak

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Yoel Rak (born June 29, 1946) is professor emeritus in the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine. His expertise lies in the fields of human anatomy and evolution. In 2008 he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Biography

Rak was born in Berlin at a displaced persons camp after World War II. His parents, Hana and Pinhas Rak, had escaped from Poland to Russia during the war, at the end of which they were transferred to Germany. Upon the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, the family emigrated to Israel and settled in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.

Career

From a young age, Rak demonstrated a strong interest in the animal world and natural history, especially fossils and paleontology. Despite the absence of a dedicated paleoanthropology program at Israeli universities in the 1960s, Rak enrolled in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in an interdisciplinary program that was created especially for him. His courses included prehistory, archaeology, anatomy, paleontology, zoology, geology, and genetics, as well as several courses in human anatomy at Tel Aviv University. In his sophomore year, Rak became a teaching assistant in anatomy and physical anthropology at Tel Aviv University’s School of Medicine.

Rak received his bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University in 1971. In 1973, he had almost completed a master’s degree at Tel Aviv University when the Yom Kippur war broke out. After serving in the reserves during the war, he enrolled in the graduate school of the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in physical anthropology, studying under eminent scholars such as Sherwood Washburn, Tim White, and F. Clark Howell. Focusing on the topography and architecture of the robust australopith face, Rak’s doctoral dissertation made a significant contribution to the field.

In 1980, Rak returned to Israel, where he joined the faculty of the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine as an assistant professor of anatomy and physical anthropology. Not long after, he was appointed to the rank of associate professor, and in 1994, was promoted to full professor. In addition to volunteering on various university committees, Rak served a term as head of the Anatomy and Anthropology Department and received the Outstanding Lecturer award numerous times. He took sabbaticals at the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, Duke University, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

In addition to many scientific papers, Rak has published a number of articles in popular Israeli science magazines, such as Mahshavot (מחשבות) and Teva Hadvarim (טבע הדברים), and is often interviewed on television and the radio.

Research

Professor Rak’s primary areas of research are human evolution, primate facial anatomy, the biomechanics and evolution of upright walking, and the biomechanics of the mandible. His scholarly contributions include two books and dozens of scientific articles.

The Skull of Australopithecus

During his doctoral studies, Rak joined a research team at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, headed by Donald Johanson. There, Rak’s focus was on the facial structure of various specimens, one of which was the famous fossil known as Lucy, a member of the species Australopithecus. In 1983, Academic Press published Rak’s first book, The Australopithecine Face, which was based on his doctoral dissertation.

The australopiths represented a stage of primitive hominids that existed for approximately one million years, until about 1.5 million years ago. These hominids walked upright and had a small brain (similar in size to the chimpanzee brain).

What was most unusual about some Australopithecus branches was their face. Their facial frame is situated farther forward than the facial center, producing a dish-shaped appearance. According to Rak, the unique facial features carried the facial muscles forward providing an elongated lever arm for the masticatory muscles.

Lucy was discovered in the Hadar region of Ethiopia. Despite the importance of this discovery, people tend to forget that she was discovered without a skull. Therefore, the skull of Australopithecus afarensis became the primary target of future expeditions. Because of war and famine in Ethiopia, fieldwork there was suspended for a number of years after Lucy’s discovery. In 1990, when research teams were resuming their work in Ethiopia, Rak joined an expedition as the team’s anatomist, alongside geologists, archaeologists, and other specialists.

During the team’s 1992 Ethiopian expedition, Rak found an adult male Australopithecus afarensis skull, named AL 444-2. The discovery was reported on the front page of The New York Times, in National Geographic Magazine, and as a cover article in Nature. Rak and his colleagues have since discovered the skulls of a female and an infant of the same species, along with a number of fossil mandibles.

In 2004, Rak published his second book, The Skull of Australopithecus afarensis (Oxford University Press), co-authored with professors William H. Kimbel and Donald Johanson at Arizona State University’s Institute of Human Origins. The book offers a detailed analysis of Australopithecus afarensis skull anatomy.

In a groundbreaking 2007 study, Rak concluded that Australopithecus afarensis was not an ancestor of modern humans, as commonly thought, but the beginning of a side branch that evolved into the robust australopiths. However, the proximity of A. afarensis to the split with humans makes it similar to their predecessor.

Neanderthal Research in Israel

Another topic that Professor Rak has been researching is the evolution of Homo neanderthalensis. In the early 1980s, he took part in excavations at a number of Israeli sites bearing Neanderthal fossils, including the Kebara Cave. Along with Professors Erella Hovers and Bill Kimbel, Rak resurrected the dig at the Amud Cave site, which was originally excavated in the early 1960s by Japanese archaeologists. More recent excavations at Amud Cave led to the discovery of a Neandertal infant.

Rak’s Neandertal research focuses primarily on facial anatomy. Unlike the front teeth of modern humans, the front teeth of Neandertals extend forward. Rak suggests that the Neandertals’ bite point was placed on the anterior part of the dental arcade. This unusual displacement was assisted by changes in the orientation of the facial bones.