Rodríguez-Gómez Guillermo

I obtained a degree in Biological Sciences in 2007, a Master´s Degree in Advanced Brain and Behaviour Studies in 2011 and a Biochemistry Degree in 2012. Thanks to this academic background, I presented in public dissertation my PhD Thesis (2015) in the field of Paleoecology. My thesis was aimed to modeling communities of Pleistocene large mammals, including human populations. From October 2010 to September 2014, I undergone my doctoral studies at the CENIEH (Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana at Burgos) funded with a FPI Predoctoral Grant in the Research Groups of Paleophysiology and Paleoecology. Moreover, my academic training was supplemented with several short stays in the Natural History Museum of London (supervised by Prof. Adrian Lister), in the Senckenberg Institute of Frankfurt am Main (supervised by Dr. Christine Hertler) and in the University of Malaga (supervised by Prof. Paul Palmqvist). During the 2017-2018 course, I worked at the University of Bordeaux as a postdoctoral researcher to carry out a project on the archaeo-paleontological site of Kozarnika (Bulgaria), being the principal investigator. During the 2018-2020 courses, I had a position in the University of Malaga with a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral contract, financed by the Spanish MICINN. Currently, I have an Atracción de Talento postdoctoral contract from the Community of Madrid at the Complutense University of Madrid, within the team of Prof. Juan Luis Arsuaga, to develop a project on Paleoecological studies in the Pleistocene sites of Orce and Sierra de Atapuerca, being the principal investigator of the project. In addition, I have been assistant professor at the University of Burgos, the University of Malaga and the Complutense University of Madrid in different subjects, such as Human Evolution, Evolution of Cognitive Abilities and Vertebrate Evolution. I have invested more than 300 hours of time in these tasks. My main line of research has been the study of the food webs of Pleistocene communities of large mammals. The aim of these works has been to gain deeper insights on the ecological framework in which the Pleistocene humans developed their life, because its reconstruction is essential to assess the role of Homo in these paleoecosystems. My main approaches are focused on estimating the availability of meat resources for the populations of Pleistocene human hunter-gatherers and evaluating its effects on facilitating human dispersal events. For doing this, I developed an original and cutting-edge model with ecological tools that allow quantifying the production of ungulate meat resources available for the human populations, which helps to estimating competition intensity in the carnivoran paleoguild and calculating which was the sustainable human density in their paleoecosystems. More relevantly, I have applied this method to the Sierra de Atapuerca and Orce sites, which are both essential for the study of early human populations in Western Europe. These works have provided relevant information about the first human settlements in Europe. Among other aspects, they have (i) allowed to reject that the cannibalism of Gran Dolina level TD6 was the result of a long-term resource scarcity; (ii) supported the that the absence of humans in the Sierra de Atapuerca 600 ka ago was due to the high level of competition among carnivores and to changes in the composition of the paleocommunity; and (iii) allowed to propose that the delay in the first human settlements of Southwestern Europe relative to the Georgian site of Dmanisi was not due to competition for meat. During my postdoctoral stage, I am progressing in different lines. Firstly, I am applying the model to sites from other time periods to evaluate the use of different environments by Pleistocene human populations. Secondly, I am studying the structure and composition of paleocommunities and analyzing processes of spatial and habitat exclusion or inclusion. Thirdly, I am analyzing resource exploitation and subsistence strategies of humans based on specific species, integrating other biological or paleontological methodologies. Lastly, I am refining several parameters of the mathematical model used in my PhD, including the acquisition of estimates for life history traits of prey species, and improving the way in which survival and mortality profiles of the potential prey species of human populations are obtained. This line of research and its results can provide relevant knowledge on early human settlements in Europe during the Pleistocene, as previous studies have shown. A reflection of the interest of the results obtained with my studies is the participation in interviews in different national media (e.g., El País, La SER, esRadio). In addition to this, I participate in scientific divulgation tasks such as publications, guiding visits to sites and teaching in which I disseminate my work, as in the Universidad Abierta a Mayores from the University of Burgos.