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Marina Elliott

Marina Elliott is a Canadian biological anthropologist, originally from Calgary, Alberta. In 2013, she was part of a team of scientists known as the Underground Astronauts who worked at the Rising Star Cave archaeological site in South Africa. Elliott was the first scientist on the team to make her way into the narrow cavern. As part of this team, her work led to the discovery of a previously unknown hominid ancestor, homo naledi. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand and was named one of National Geographic's Emerging Explorers.

Education and Research
Marina Elliott received her PhD from Simon Fraser University in 2015 with a dissertation titled Estimating body mass in biological anthropology: an evaluation using three-dimensional computed tomography. She received her MA from SFU in 2008 and her BA from the University of British Columbia in 2005.

Prior to the Rising Star Expedition, Elliott did fieldwork in Siberia at Lake Baikal and Alaska at Nuvuk on Point Barrow. She has commented that she seems to "specialize in inhospitable environments. "

She continues to excavate at the Rising Star site and to explore and excavate other caves in the Cradle of Humankind.

An article authored by Elliott and others suggests that the remains found in the Rising Star Cave may have been deliberately placed there, perhaps as burial rites. The claim is controversial.

Her work has been published on the open access site eLife, a website which makes the research findings accessible to the public, which Elliott contends is one of the most important things about the work.

Awards and Distinctions
2016 National Geographic Emerging Explorer.

Selected Publications

 * Elliott, M. and Collard, M., 2009. Fordisc and the determination of ancestry from cranial measurements. Biology letters, p.rsbl20090462.


 * Dirks, P.H., Berger, L.R., Roberts, E.M., Kramers, J.D., Hawks, J., Randolph-Quinney, P.S., Elliott, M., Musiba, C.M., Churchill, S.E., de Ruiter, D.J. and Schmid, P., 2015. Geological and taphonomic context for the new hominin species Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa. eLife, 4, p.e09561.