The past few decades of paleoanthropological research has seen a focus on the human paleobiology (and mortuary analysis) of the Upper Paleolithic / Later Stone Age (≈40 – ≈10 ka). These people have been increasingly viewed in terms of dynamic and culturally complex forager populations in a changing global climate, instead of being studied merely in terms of the establishment of modern versus archaic human biology. These analyses have been concerned with trends through this period in shifting body proportions, reflections of activity levels, growth and development, changing levels and patterns of paleopathology, aspects of dental structure and wear, skeletal reflections of diverse mortuary behaviors, patterns of population diversity and dispersal, and adaptations to diverse environments. The research has been greatly augmented by detailed reassessments of long-known important human skeletal samples, combined with the analyses of newly discovered remains. This symposium brings together an international group of paleoanthropologists addressing these issues with new data, new analyses and new fossils. It is designed to foster discussion on the biology and behavior of these Late Pleistocene early modern humans, the people who reflect both the heyday of highly successful global hunter-gatherers and provided the background for the increased sedentism of the early Holocene.