About

Erin DiMaggio is an Associate Research Professor at Penn State University in the Department of Geosciences. Her research focuses on sedimentary rocks and volcanic deposits to understand the continental rifting process, the timing and geologic setting of early human evolution, extensional faulting and basin development, and the magmatic evolution of explosive volcanism in rift zones. Her work is primarily centered in eastern Africa and involves collaboration with paleontologists and archaeologists. Key projects include geochemical correlations of tephra deposits in Afar, Ethiopia for human origins studies, stratigraphic analysis of paleontological sites near Narok, Kenya, geomorphological studies of the lower Awash in Ethiopia using cosmogenic radionuclides, and building a geochemical database for eastern Africa in collaboration with NSF/IEDA. In addition to her research, DiMaggio has been actively involved in outreach programs promoting STEM education for K-12 and higher education students. She serves as the PSU Undergraduate Research Programs Director for the NASA/Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium at Penn State, directing the WISER|MURE|FURP research internship program that places first-year undergraduates with faculty mentors in STEM fields. She also develops and teaches workshops for Pennsylvania K-12 teachers on topics such as the geology and paleontology of the Bighorn Basin and explosive volcanic deposits.

Research topics

• Earth science
• Geology
• Geochemistry
• Paleontology
• Computer Science
• Database
• Data science

Selected publications

• DOES A GRAY PUMICE RICH LAPILLI TUFF FROM A FOSSIL LOCATION IN CENTRAL LEE ADOYTA, WITHIN LGRP, GEOCHEMICALLY CORRELATE TO A KNOWN DATED TUFF CALLED THE GURUMAHA TUFF?

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2025-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The first occurrence of <i>Cainochoerus</i> (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Upper Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya

  Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access

  Cainochoerus is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and temporal range (ca. 10-4.4 Ma), it remains a rare taxon in eastern Africa. Here we report new dentognathic material representing the first reported occurrence of Cainochoerus from the Late Miocene (6 Ma) Lemudong'o Formation, Kenya. This includes the first known deciduous upper premolar attributed to this taxon in eastern Africa. The dental metrics are generally consistent with those attributed to Cainochoerus africanus from Langebaanweg, South Africa. The maxillary molars are closely similar in morphology to those from Lothagam, Kenya, with slight differences in the upper second molar. Because Cainochoerus africanus is the only known Late Miocene small suid in Africa, we attribute these fossils to Cainochoerus cf. africanus. This discovery adds another mammalian species to the faunal community of the Lemudong'o Formation and slightly expands the geographic range of Cainochoerus to the southern Kenyan Rift.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• New discoveries of Australopithecus and Homo from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia

  Nature · 2025-08-13 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  The time interval between about three and two million years ago is a critical period in human evolution—this is when the genera Homo and Paranthropus first appear in the fossil record and a possible ancestor of these genera, Australopithecus afarensis, disappears. In eastern Africa, attempts to test hypotheses about the adaptive contexts that led to these events are limited by a paucity of fossiliferous exposures that capture this interval. Here we describe the age, geologic context and dental morphology of new hominin fossils recovered from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area, Ethiopia, which includes sediments from this critically underrepresented period. We report the presence of Homo at 2.78 and 2.59 million years ago and Australopithecus at 2.63 million years ago. Although the Australopithecus specimens cannot yet be identified to species level, their morphology differs from A. afarensis and Australopithecus garhi. These specimens suggest that Australopithecus and early Homo co-existed as two non-robust lineages in the Afar Region before 2.5 million years ago, and that the hominin fossil record is more diverse than previously known. Accordingly, there were as many as four hominin lineages living in eastern Africa between 3.0 and 2.5 million years ago: early Homo1, Paranthropus2, A. garhi3, and the newly discovered Ledi-Geraru Australopithecus. Hominin fossils from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area, Ethiopia, suggest that early Homo and Australopithecus species co-existed in the region more than 2.5 million years ago.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The first occurrence of <i>Cainochoerus</i> (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Upper Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya

  Figshare · 2025-12-19

  datasetOpen access

  <i>Cainochoerus</i> is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and temporal range (ca. 10–4.4 Ma), it remains a rare taxon in eastern Africa. Here we report new dentognathic material representing the first reported occurrence of <i>Cainochoerus</i> from the Late Miocene (6 Ma) Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya. This includes the first known deciduous upper premolar attributed to this taxon in eastern Africa. The dental metrics are generally consistent with those attributed to <i>Cainochoerus africanus</i> from Langebaanweg, South Africa. The maxillary molars are closely similar in morphology to those from Lothagam, Kenya, with slight differences in the upper second molar. Because <i>Cainochoerus africanus</i> is the only known Late Miocene small suid in Africa, we attribute these fossils to <i>Cainochoerus</i> cf. <i>africanus</i>. This discovery adds another mammalian species to the faunal community of the Lemudong’o Formation and slightly expands the geographic range of <i>Cainochoerus</i> to the southern Kenyan Rift.

  PublisherDOI

• The first occurrence of <i>Cainochoerus</i> (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Upper Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya

  Figshare · 2025-12-19

  datasetOpen access

  <i>Cainochoerus</i> is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and temporal range (ca. 10–4.4 Ma), it remains a rare taxon in eastern Africa. Here we report new dentognathic material representing the first reported occurrence of <i>Cainochoerus</i> from the Late Miocene (6 Ma) Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya. This includes the first known deciduous upper premolar attributed to this taxon in eastern Africa. The dental metrics are generally consistent with those attributed to <i>Cainochoerus africanus</i> from Langebaanweg, South Africa. The maxillary molars are closely similar in morphology to those from Lothagam, Kenya, with slight differences in the upper second molar. Because <i>Cainochoerus africanus</i> is the only known Late Miocene small suid in Africa, we attribute these fossils to <i>Cainochoerus</i> cf. <i>africanus</i>. This discovery adds another mammalian species to the faunal community of the Lemudong’o Formation and slightly expands the geographic range of <i>Cainochoerus</i> to the southern Kenyan Rift.

  PublisherDOI

• The first occurrence of Cainochoerus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Late Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya

  Figshare · 2025-12-19

  datasetOpen access

  <i>Cainochoerus</i> is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and temporal range (ca. 10–4.4 Ma), it remains a rare taxon in eastern Africa. Here we report new dentognathic material representing the first reported occurrence of <i>Cainochoerus</i> from the Late Miocene (6 Ma) Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya. This includes the first known deciduous upper premolar attributed to this taxon in eastern Africa. The dental metrics are generally consistent with those attributed to <i>Cainochoerus africanus</i> from Langebaanweg, South Africa. The maxillary molars are closely similar in morphology to those from Lothagam, Kenya, with slight differences in the upper second molar. Because <i>Cainochoerus africanus</i> is the only known Late Miocene small suid in Africa, we attribute these fossils to <i>Cainochoerus</i> cf. <i>africanus</i>. This discovery adds another mammalian species to the faunal community of the Lemudong’o Formation and slightly expands the geographic range of <i>Cainochoerus</i> to the southern Kenyan Rift.

  PublisherDOI

• THE GEOCHEMISTRY OF TEPHRA FROM LATE MIOCENE FOSSIL SITES IN SOUTHERN KENYA

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Geology
  • Geochemistry
  • Earth science
  PublisherDOI

• BROADENING ACCESS TO VOLCANIC DATASETS FROM EAST AFRICA

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2023-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• EARThD: an effort to make East African tephra geochemical data available and accessible

  2022 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Earth science

  &amp;lt;div&amp;gt;Tephra deposits are excellent chronostratigraphic markers that are prolific and widespread in portions of the East African Rift (EAR). Arguably one of the most powerful applications of tephrochronology is the establishment of regional chronological frameworks, enabling the integrated study of the timescales and interaction of the geosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. In order for these disparate disciplines to integrate and fully utilize the growing number of available tephra datasets, infrastructural efforts that centralize and standardize information are required. Of particular importance to these efforts is digitizing and standardizing previously published datasets to make them discoverable in alignment with current FAIR data reporting practices. &amp;amp;#160;&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;&amp;lt;div&amp;gt;&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;EARThD is a NSF funded data compilation project that has integrated and standardized geochemical and geochronological data from over 400 published scientific papers investigating tephra datasets from the East African Rift. Our team has trained 15 undergraduate students in spreadsheet data entry and management, data mining, scientific paper comprehension, and in East African tephrochronology. We utilize an existing NSF-supported community-based data facility, Interdisciplinary Earth Data Alliance (IEDA), to store, curate, and provide access to the datasets. We are currently working with IEDA to ensure that data generated from EARThD is ingested into the IEDA Petrological Database (PetDB) and ultimately EarthChem, making it broadly available. Here we demonstrate our data entry process and how a user can locate, retrieve, and utilize EARThD tephra datasets. With this effort we aim to preserve available geochemical data for posterity, fulfilling a crucial data integration role for researchers working in East Africa --especially those working at paleontological and archeological sites where tephra dating and geochemical correlations are critical. The EARThD compilation also enables data synthesis efforts required to address new science questions.&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;

  PublisherDOI

• AVAILABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY OF EAST AFRICAN TEPHRA GEOCHEMICAL DATA COMPILED IN EARTHD

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2021 · 4 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Geology
  • Earth science
  • Geochemistry
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• J Ramón Arrowsmith

  Arizona State University

  21 shared

• Christopher J. Campisano

  Arizona State University

  18 shared

• Kaye E. Reed

  Arizona State University

  11 shared

• Guillaume Dupont‐Nivet

  Géosciences Rennes

  10 shared

• Alan L. Deino

  Berkeley Geochronology Center

  8 shared

• Sara Mana

  Salem State University

  8 shared

• Brian Villmoare

  University of Nevada, Las Vegas

  5 shared

• Dominique Garello

  Louisiana State University

  5 shared