Recovery and Analysis of Early Pleistocene Hominin Fossils and Footprints, Ileret, Kenya

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Recently about half of an associated hominin (human ancestors and extinct relatives) upper limb skeleton and several layers of sediment containing hominin and other animal footprints were discovered at a 1.5 million-year old site (FwJj14) in Kenya. This award continues the fieldwork on this important discovery. Its goals are to 1) recover more of the newly-discovered associated hominin skeleton likely belonging to the extinct human relative, Paranthropus boisei; 2) excavate, scan, and analyze three footprint layers at FwJj14E, including two layers with hominin footprints; and 3) excavate, scan and analyze a footprint layer at GaJi10 that also preserves hominin prints. These discoveries offer a unique opportunity to test long-standing hypotheses, ask novel questions, and dramatically improve our understanding of hand and upper limb anatomy, bipedal gait, behavior, and environmental context of sympatric hominins during this critical time in human evolutionary history. This project offers a number of measurable broader impacts for the scientific community by fostering interdisciplinary and international collaboration, improving training of African scholars, and improving ethnic representation in paleoanthropology in the US. The data as well as 3D scan data of footprints will be available to the National Museum of Kenya, other scholars, and the Human Origins Database, soon-to-be publicly accessible through the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This project will strengthen international (US-Kenya-South Africa-UK) and, within the US, inter-institutional (George Washington University-James Madison University-Smithsonian Institution-Rutgers University) collaborations. Furthermore, this project demonstrates a strong commitment to train US students from groups underrepresented (e.g., African-American, Hispanic) in paleoanthropology, as well as graduate students from Kenya and South Africa.