Biography
Christos Alexandros Plastiras is a palaeontologist and palaeecologists from Greece. From early years of his academic studies he was highly involved in paleontological field campaigns in northern Greece (2011 and still going), as well as numerous fossil preparation tasks. After an Msc focused on paleontological research techniques, he continued with a PhD (2017-2021) which was a collaborative project between the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and the University of Poitiers (France). For the purposes of his dissertation, he received two scholarships; National Scholarship Foundation of Greece (IKY) and Eiffel Excellence Scholarship Programme (France).
During his PhD, he travelled across Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, France, Switzerland, Spain, Romania) and Asia (Japan) to visit several institutional collections of primates, also participating in paleontological field campaigns in France.
In Cambridge, he is working as a research associate in African Paleontology, aiming to better understand the ecological and faunal context of the evolution of our species (the genus Homo) from Middle Pleistocene and onwards.
Research
My research so far revolved around exploring the dietary ecology of extinct primates (e.g., Cercopithecidae) in Europe throughout Plio-Pleistocene. I investigate their dietary habits, using dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA), a technique that studies microscopic wear features on their tooth surfaces caused by food. Furthermore, I use dental topographic and enamel thickness analysis on 3D models of their dentition aiming to better understand the relationship of several aspects of tooth form/shape in respect to diet.
Key Publications
Plastiras, C. A., Thiery, G., Guy, F., Kostopoulos, D. S., Lazzari, V., & Merceron, G. (2022). Feeding ecology of the last European colobine monkey, Dolichopithecus ruscinensis. Journal of Human Evolution, 168, 103199.
Merceron, G., Kallend, A., Francisco, A., Louail, M., Martin, F., Plastiras, C.A., Thiery, G. and Boisserie, J.R., 2021. Further away with dental microwear analysis: Food resource partitioning among Plio-Pleistocene monkeys from the Shungura Formation, Ethiopia. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 572, p.110414.
Martin, F., Plastiras, C. A., Merceron, G., Souron, A., & Boisserie, J. R. (2018). Dietary niches of terrestrial cercopithecines from the Plio-Pleistocene Shungura Formation, Ethiopia: evidence from dental microwear texture analysis. Scientific reports, 8(1), 1-13.
