Hominid Habitats in the Turkana Basin

在肯尼亚北部的图尔卡纳盆地进行的研究目前为东非早期人类的发展提供了重要的证据。很少有地方像这里这样适合回答当今古人类学中提出的一些主要问题。这在很大程度上是由于我们对包裹化石和人工制品的沉积物的详细地层关系、年代学和环境意义的了解程度。将这些知识的地理范围扩展到盆地的外围地区具有相当大的前景，因为最近在那里发现的矿床代表了迄今为止鲜为人知的习性。这一建议是为了继续研究图尔卡纳盆地层序和其他远端沉积物（包括阿瓦什山谷、巴林戈盆地和艾伯特湖裂谷）的地层地层学，以便对这些广泛分布的地区进行时间整合。此外，对图尔卡纳盆地沉积物的详细地层学和古环境背景的持续研究将进一步完善我们对早期人类最丰富记录之一的背景的理解。

Studies in the Turkana Basin of northern Kenya are currently yielding important evidence of the development of early humans in East Africa. Few localities are as ideally suited to answer some of the major questions being asked in paleoanthropology today. This is largely due to the extent of our knowledge of the detailed stratigraphic relations, chronology and environmental significance of the deposits which enclose the fossils and artifacts there. Expanding the geographic range of that knowledge to peripheral areas of the basin holds considerable promise, as recently discovered deposits there represent habits thus far poorly known. This proposal is for continued study of the tephrostratigraphy of the Turkana Basin sequence and of other distal deposits (including the Awash Valley, Baringo Basin and Lake Albert Rift) erupted from the same sources in order to allow temporal integration of these widespread localities. In addition, continued study of the detailed stratigraphy and paleoenvironmental context of the Turkana Basin deposits will further refine our understanding of the context from which one of the richest record of early humans has been recovered.