birth_place awards nationality fields workplaces birth_date known_for article_title name alma_mater
chicago member of the american academy of arts and sciences , gordon of j. laing award the national academy of sciences , member american paleoanthropology stanford washington , seattle ; northwestern university in evanston , illinois university ; university of wisconsin -- milwaukee ; university of chicago ; university of 11 april 1941 study of human origins richard klein -lrb- paleoanthropologist -rrb-
 richard g. klein university of chicago university of michigan
richard klein -lrb- paleoanthropologist -rrb-

richard g. klein -lrb- born april 11 , 1941 -rrb- is a professor of biology and anthropology at stanford university .
he is the anne t. and robert m. bass professor in the school of humanities and sciences .
he earned his ph.d. at the university of chicago in 1966 , and was elected to the national academy of sciences in april 2003 .
his research interests include paleoanthropology , africa and europe .
his primary thesis is that modern humans evolved in east africa some 100,000 years ago and , starting 50,000 years ago , began spreading throughout the non-african world , replacing archaic human populations over time .
he is a critic of the idea that behavioral modernity arose gradually over the course of tens of thousands , hundreds of thousands of years or millions of years , he instead supports the view that modern behavior arose suddenly in the upper paleolithic revolution around 50,000 or 40,000 years ago .
