Paleonanthropological Research in the Laetoli Area, Tanzania

过去50年左右的古生物学研究以惊人的方式证明了东非遗址对记录人类进化最早阶段的重要性。坦桑尼亚北部的Laetoli被认为是这些遗址中最重要的一个。上世纪70年代末和80年代初，玛丽·利基（Mary Leakey）在Laetoli进行的研究带来了重大的新发现，这些发现对提高对人类和非洲动物进化史的理解做出了重大贡献。虽然这项研究为该地区的地质和古生物学研究奠定了良好的基础，但很明显，在Laetoli的继续研究中，关于人类进化的过程和背景，还有很多东西可以了解。该项目的目的是继续PI于1998年夏天发起的在laetoli地区上新世地区进行地质和古生物学研究的长期计划。主要目标是恢复更多的原始人类化石，并获得关于古生物学、地质学、年代测定和古生态学的更详细的背景信息。在Laetoli地区进行的野外研究和勘探计划提供了产生新数据的潜力，这些数据将对更好地理解人类进化的化石证据及其古生态背景做出重大贡献。这些调查结果将用于解决古人类学研究中的几个关键问题：(1)澄清早期古人类的系统发育关系和分类；(2)更好地了解南方古猿阿法种的解剖学和古生物学，这是解释人类早期进化史的关键物种；(3)对Laetoli古人类的古生态联系进行更详细和批判性的评估，以确定可能导致非洲早期古人类最初分化和随后多样化的因素。

Paleontological research over the past fifty years or so has demonstratedin spectacular fashion the significance of sites in East Africa fordocumenting the earliest stages in human evolution. Laetoli in northernTanzania is renowned as one of the most important of these sites. Previousresearch at Laetoli by Mary Leakey in the late 1970s and early 1980s led tomajor new discoveries that have contributed significantly to an improvedunderstanding of the evolutionary history of humans and of African faunasin general. Although this research has laid an excellent foundation forgeological and paleontological investigations in the region, it is evidentthat there is still a great deal that can be learned about the course andcontext of human evolution from continued studies at Laetoli. The aim of this project is to continue with a long-term program ofgeological and paleontological research at Pliocene localities in theLaetoli area that was initiated by the PI in the summer of 1998. The mainobjectives are to recover additional fossil hominids and to obtain moredetailed contextual information on the paleontology, geology, dating, andpaleoecology. The proposed program of field research and exploration inthe Laetoli area offers the potential to yield new data that willcontribute significantly to a better understanding of the fossil evidencefor human evolution and its paleoecological context. Results from theseinvestigations will be used to address several key problems in the study ofpaleoanthropology: (1) clarification of the phylogenetic relationships andtaxonomy of early hominids; (2) a better appreciation of the anatomy andpaleobiology of Australopithecus afarensis - a pivotal species in theinterpretation of the early evolutionary history of humans, and (3) thedevelopment of a more detailed and critical assessment of thepaleoecological associations of the Laetoli hominids in order to identifyfactors that may have contributed to the initial divergence and subsequentdiversification of early hominids in Africa.