Felipe Martinez

Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Escuela de Antropología, Faculty Member

Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Instituto de Sociología, Faculty Member

University of Cambridge, Biological Anthropology, Alumnus

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I am an Associate Professor at the School of Anthropology, in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. My interests cover a range of topics related to human evolution and diversity, from molecular genetics, to morphology, behaviour and cultural evolution. I received my PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2010. My PhD research focused in studying the molecular and genetics bases of human craniofacial development, variability and evolution, combining molecular genetics techniques, bioinformatics, medical imaging, virtual anthropology and morphometrics.
Currently, my core research takes place in Africa. Since 2016, at Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, I study baboon (Papio sp.) gene flow and hybridization as a model to understand patterns in early human evolution. As a member of the Paleo-Primate Project lead by Susana Carvalho (https://primobevolab.web.ox.ac.uk/paleo-primate-project-gorongosa-mozambique), we conduct primatological and paleontological fieldwork in southernmost part of the Great Rift Valley (https://www.gorongosa.org/explore-park/landscapes/great-rift).
In addition, since 2012 I am a research associate at the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR - http://www.ciir.cl/ciir.cl/en) studying archaeological heritage and repatriation. Since 2014, I am also a research collaborator at the Millennium Institute for Depression and Personality Research (MIDAP - http://midap.org). My experience at CIIR and MIDAP taught me about the importance to conduct transdisciplinary research in order to understand social and biological phenomena.
At the School of Anthropology I teach introductory courses in human evolution, human biological diversity and statistics. Also, I was in charge of the institutional project that created the undergraduate program in archaeology.

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Noel B. Salazar

KU Leuven

Robert Lickliter

Florida International University

Julian D Reynolds

Trinity College Dublin

Andrei Dorian Soficaru

Institutul de Antropologie “Francisc J. Rainer”

Tristan Carter

McMaster University

Kristen J Gremillion

Ohio State University

Bert Vaux

University of Cambridge

Thales R.O. Freitas

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Pedro Martinez

Universitat de Barcelona

Oludamini Ogunnaike

University of Virginia

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Papers by Felipe Martinez

The genetic history of the Southern Andes from present-day Mapuche ancestry

Current Biology

The southernmost regions of South America harbor some of the earliest evidence of human presence ... more The southernmost regions of South America harbor some of the earliest evidence of human presence in the Americas. However, connections with the rest of the continent and the contextualization of present-day indigenous ancestries remain poorly resolved. In this study, we analyze the genetic ancestry of one of the largest indigenous groups in South America: the Mapuche. We generate genome-wide data from 64 participants from three Mapuche populations in Southern Chile: Pehuenche, Lafkenche, and Huilliche. Broadly, we describe three main ancestry blocks with a common origin, which characterize the Southern Cone, the Central Andes, and Amazonia. Within the Southern Cone, ancestors of the Mapuche lineages differentiated from those of the Far South during the Middle Holocene and did not experience further migration waves from the north. We find that the deep genetic split between the Central and Southern Andes is followed by instances of gene flow, which may have accompanied the southward spread of cultural traits from the Central Andes, including crops and loanwords from Quechua into Mapudungun (the language of the Mapuche). Finally, we report close genetic relatedness between the three populations analyzed, with the Huilliche characterized additionally by intense recent exchanges with the Far South. Our findings add new perspectives on the genetic (pre)history of South America, from the first settlement through to the present-day indigenous presence. Follow-up fieldwork took these results back to the indigenous communities to contextualize the genetic narrative alongside indigenous knowledge and perspectives.

Carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen stable isotopes in modern tooth enamel: A case study from Gorongosa National Park, central Mozambique

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

The analyses of the stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ13C), nitrogen (δ15N), and oxygen (δ18O) in... more The analyses of the stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ13C), nitrogen (δ15N), and oxygen (δ18O) in animal tissues are powerful tools for reconstructing the feeding behavior of individual animals and characterizing trophic interactions in food webs. Of these biomaterials, tooth enamel is the hardest, most mineralized vertebrate tissue and therefore least likely to be affected by chemical alteration (i.e., its isotopic composition can be preserved over millions of years), making it an important and widely available archive for biologists and paleontologists. Here, we present the first combined measurements of δ13C, δ15N, and δ18O in enamel from the teeth of modern fauna (herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores) from the well-studied ecosystem of Gorongosa National Park (GNP) in central Mozambique. We use two novel methods to produce high-precision stable isotope enamel data: (i) the “oxidation-denitrification method,”which permits the measurement of mineral-bound organic nitrogen in toot...

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