Prof Higham (45), who returned to Dunedin on holiday this week, is one of three professors in the Higham family, having long served as deputy director of the radiocarbon-dating unit at Oxford University.
His brother, Prof James Higham, is head of the Otago University department of tourism.
Their father, Prof Charles Higham, is a foundation professor of anthropology at Otago, whose archeological research in Thailand has helped revolutionise an understanding of Thai and Southeast Asian prehistory.
Research involving the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, at Oxford University, and linked to ancient bones and teeth found at sites in England and Italy has just pushed back the dates for the arrival of modern humans in Europe by about 5000 years, The Guardian newspaper recently noted.
Articles published in Nature showed that two baby teeth, found in Apulia, Italy, and a jawbone fragment, from Kent's Cavern, in Devon, were considerably older than previously thought, and that the Italian teeth were from early modern humans, not from Neanderthals, as previously believed.
Previously it had been thought that Homo sapiens reached Europe about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, just as the Neanderthals, who had ruled the continent for several hundred thousand years, began to die out.
The Guardian rated these linked archaeology stories jointly as one of the year's "10 biggest stories" in science.
"It's great. I'm just really pleased for everybody," Prof Higham said.
He believed the piece of jawbone found in Devon was "the earliest direct evidence we have of modern humans in northwestern Europe".
"It also means that early humans must have coexisted with Neanderthals in this part of the world, something which a number of researchers have doubted."
