Miocene Habitats of Proconsul on Rusinga Island

这项研究的主要目的是利用埋藏土壤的证据来了解肯尼亚鲁辛加岛约1700万年前最著名的早期化石猿之一Proconsul的栖息地。领事属于猴子类人猿的一个古老的群体，被广泛认为是大猩猩和早期人类祖先(南方古猿)的祖先。在埋藏在河流沉积序列中的土壤中，发现了类人猿化石和其他哺乳动物化石。其中一些化石是精致的头骨和有关节的四肢，不可能被运到离动物居住地很远的地方。在这些河流沉积物中埋藏的各种土壤中，总督一直存在于一种埋藏的土壤中。对这一提议的微观和化学研究的目的是确切地确定这些土壤在形成时是什么类型的土壤，从而确定普罗索在植被镶嵌中生活的地方。

The primary objective of this research is use the evidence of buried soils to understand the habitat of one of the best known early fossil apes called Proconsul some 17 million years old from Rusinga Island, Kenya. Proconsul belonged to an archaic group of monkey-apes (proconsulids) widely considered ancestral to both the great apes and to early human ancestors (australiopithecines). The fossil apes are found along with other mammal fossils in soils buried within a sequence of river deposits. Some of the fossils are delicate skulls and articulated limbs that could not have been transported far from where the animals lived. Of the various kinds of soils buried within these stream deposits, Proconsul is consistently found in one kind of buried soil. The microscopic and chemical studies of this proposal are aimed at determining exactly what kinds of soils these were when they formed, and thus where in the mosaic of vegetation Proconsul lived.