The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project: inferring the environmental context of human evolution from eastern African rift lake deposits
The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project: inferring the environmental context of human evolution from eastern African rift lake deposits
复制标题
DOI：
10.5194/sd-21-1-2016
复制
发表时间：
2016-02-19
影响因子：
1.2
通讯作者：
Zinaye, B.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cohen, A.;Campisano, C.;Zinaye, B.
几十年来，气候和环境历史在影响人类进化中可能发挥的作用一直是古人类学家极大兴趣和争议的焦点。之前了解这个方程的环境历史方面的尝试主要集中在对人类化石（现代人类的祖先或近亲）发现地附近的露头沉积物和化石的研究，或对深海钻芯的研究。然而，露头沉积物通常风化程度很高，因此不适合某些类型的古气候记录，而深海岩心记录来自距离实际化石和石器遗迹很远的地方。古人类遗址和古湖钻探项目 (HSPDP) 的开发就是为了解决这些问题。该项目的重点是东非大裂谷，那里发现了许多早期人类的证据。我们从肯尼亚和埃塞俄比亚的六个盆地中收集了约 2 公里长的沉积物钻芯，这些沉积物位于紧邻重要古人类化石和考古遗址的湖泊沉积物中。这些核心在时间上涵盖了过去 4 Ma 中人类进化史上的许多关键转变和关键间隔，例如最早的石器、人类属的起源以及解剖学上最早的现代智人。在此，我们记录了 2012-2014 年 HSPDP 取心活动的初始磁场、物理性质和岩心描述结果。
The role that climate and environmental history may have played in influencing human evolution has been the focus of considerable interest and controversy among paleoanthropologists for decades. Prior attempts to understand the environmental history side of this equation have centered around the study of outcrop sediments and fossils adjacent to where fossil hominins (ancestors or close relatives of modern humans) are found, or from the study of deep sea drill cores. However, outcrop sediments are often highly weathered and thus are unsuitable for some types of paleoclimatic records, and deep sea core records come from long distances away from the actual fossil and stone tool remains. The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) was developed to address these issues. The project has focused its efforts on the eastern African Rift Valley, where much of the evidence for early hominins has been recovered. We have collected about 2 km of sediment drill core from six basins in Kenya and Ethiopia, in lake deposits immediately adjacent to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites. Collectively these cores cover in time many of the key transitions and critical intervals in human evolutionary history over the last 4 Ma, such as the earliest stone tools, the origin of our own genus Homo, and the earliest anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Here we document the initial field, physical property, and core description results of the 2012-2014 HSPDP coring campaign.