Mesozoic Continental Vertebrate Faunas of Ethiopia

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This collaborative research grant supports the international linkage costs to enable Dr. W. A. Clemens, Professor in the Department of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, and two colleagues, to conduct one month's field reconnaissance research in January 1996, to amplify previous discoveries of Mesozoic vertebrate fossils in Ethiopia and Tigray. The team will intensively prospect exposures of Mesozoic sediments in the Abay (Upper Blue Nile) River Basin. Prospecting will be directed toward discovery of remains of both small vertebrates as well as the larger dinosaurs and other reptiles. The research is expected to yield data concerning questions of phylogenetic interrelationships of lineages of Jurassic African vertebrates and their changing biogeographic distributions. The foreign partners are the Dr. Getaneh Assefa, of the Department of Geology and Geophysics, Addis Ababa University, and Dr. Jara Haile Mariam, the Director of the Natural History Museum, Addis Ababa. The collaboration with the Ethiopian institutions, which are making their laboratory and curatorial facilities available for the team's use, is expected to lead to definition of future, long-term research projects. The strengthening of academic relations between the US and Ethiopian institutions will create new opportunities for field experience for US students, and training of Ethiopian students.