Mark Stoneking

Mark Stoneking
Born (1956-08-01) 1 August 1956 (age 68)
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Known forMitochondrial Eve
Out of Africa Theory
AwardsSee text
Scientific career
FieldsAnthropology, population genetics
InstitutionsMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Doctoral advisorAllan Wilson

Mark Stoneking (born 1 August 1956) is a geneticist currently working as the Group Leader of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, of Max Planck Gesellschaft at Leipzig, and Honorary Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. He works in the field of human evolution, especially the genetic evolution, origin and dispersal of modern humans. He, along with his doctoral advisor Allan Wilson and a fellow researcher Rebecca L. Cann, contributed to the "Out of Africa" theory in 1987 by introducing the concept of Mitochondrial Eve, a hypothetical common mother of all living humans based on mitochondrial DNA.