As a paleoanthropologist, my research addresses questions related to ape and human evolution. Specifically, I am interested in the functional relationships between the mechanical loading associated with dietary and locomotor adaptations and hard and soft tissue anatomy, and what these relationships might reveal about the paleoebiology and evolution of fossil apes and early humans. The more accurate our interpretations of fossil ape and early human locomotor adaptations and diet, the greater the potential for that information to contribute answers to research questions about why these taxa evolved, what made them successful in some cases, and extinct in others, and the connection between diet and locomotion and the origins of the lineages of living apes and humans.