Kira Westaway

Kira Westaway reconstructs and dates early human evidence at archaeological sites in Southeast Asia, to help us to appreciate how they lived and died. This provides archaeologists with a better understanding of our early ancestors.

As part of an international research team she established the age for the 'Hobbit' site at Liang Bua cave, Western Flores, Indonesia and other sites in the wider Southeast Asian region in an attempt to discover its ancestors.

This research has greatly influenced our understanding of human evolution and what constituents 'being human' and has challenged many of our established ideas about human dispersal across the globe.

She is currently hunting an extinct ape called Gigantopithecus blacki in southern China, who could turn out to be the real King Kong!