A 750,000-yr Leaf Wax Biomarker Record to Assess Environmental Change Across the Plio-Pleistocene Boundary in Tropical East Africa

750,000 年叶蜡生物标记记录可评估热带东非上里欧-更新世边界的环境变化

• 批准号: 1826938
• 负责人: James Russell
• 金额: $ 30.25万
• 依托单位: Brown University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1826938&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: 750; 000; yr; Leaf; Wax

About three million years ago, the Arctic cooled dramatically, and northern hemisphere glaciers expanded and began to wax and wane in 41,000-year glacial cycles. Around the same time, parts of Africa became drier, and our human ancestors underwent a set of evolutionary shifts including the appearance of the genus Homo. Many studies have suggested that these changes are linked, wherein global cooling causes drying over Africa, which in turn triggers human evolutionary responses. This project will reconstruct environmental changes occurring in Africa between 3.3 and 2.5 million years ago to test the relationships between global climate transitions, African environmental change, and human evolutionary events. This research will provide an outstanding platform to train a diverse set of students and young researchers in interdisciplinary research in the Earth Sciences, including Brown University graduate students and undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups. We will further develop new middle-school educational modules on environmental change and human evolution in collaboration with teachers from the Providence public schools.This project aims to develop new, high-resolution records of African environmental change through organic geochemical analyses of a recently recovered, exceptionally well-dated ~750,000-year-long drill core from the Baringo-Tugen-Barsemoi (BTB), in the Eastern Kenyan Rift that spans the Plio-Pleistocene boundary. We will analyze the hydrogen and carbon isotopic composition of terrestrial leaf wax biomarkers in this core to detect changes in rainfall and vegetation between 3.3 and 2.55 Ma. These data will be used to test the relationships between East African climate and vegetation and the onset and intensification of northern hemisphere glaciation, as well as other global and regional climate forcings. Our new data will be further compared to mammalian and hominin fossil datasets to test whether changes in the trend, variability, and rate of environmental change can be related to hominin evolutionary events. These state-of-the-art analyses will provide research training opportunities for a diverse set of graduate and undergraduate students and provide a framework to develop new middle-school educational modules on environmental change and human evolution that meet Next Generation Science Standards. Project results will refine our understanding of the connections between high and low latitude climate and the impacts of long-term vs. orbital-scale changes in global climate on African climate, ecosystems, and hominin evolution.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

大约三百万年前，北极冷却了，北半球冰川扩大，开始在41，000年的冰川周期中蜡和减弱。 大约在同一时间，非洲的部分地区变得更干燥，我们的人类祖先进行了一系列的进化转变，包括homo属的出现。 许多研究表明，这些变化是联系在一起的，其中全球冷却导致非洲干燥，这反过来触发了人类进化反应。 该项目将在3.3到250万年前重建非洲发生的环境变化，以测试全球气候过渡，非洲环境变化和人类进化事件之间的关系。 这项研究将提供一个出色的平台，用于培训地球科学跨学科研究的各种学生和年轻研究人员，包括布朗大学的研究生和来自历史上代表性不足的群体的本科生。 We will further develop new middle-school educational modules on environmental change and human evolution in collaboration with teachers from the Providence public schools.This project aims to develop new, high-resolution records of African environmental change through organic geochemical analyses of a recently recovered, exceptionally well-dated ~750,000-year-long drill core from the Baringo-Tugen-Barsemoi (BTB), in the Eastern Kenyan Rift that spans the Plio-Pleistecene边界。 我们将分析该核心中陆叶蜡生物标志物的氢和碳同位素组成，以检测3.3至2.55 MA之间的降雨和植被的变化。这些数据将用于测试东非气候与植被之间的关系，以及北半球冰川以及其他全球和区域气候强迫的发作和增强。 我们的新数据将与哺乳动物和人类化石数据集进行比较，以测试趋势，可变性和环境变化速率是否与人类进化事件有关。 这些最先进的分析将为各种研究生和本科生提供研究培训机会，并提供一个框架，以开发有关符合下一代科学标准的环境变化和人类进化的新的中学教育模块。项目结果将完善我们对高纬度和低纬度气候之间的联系以及长期与轨道规模变化对非洲气候，生态系统和人本蛋白进化的影响的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过该基金会的知识优点和广泛的影响来评估NSF的法定任务，并通过评估值得进行评估。

项目成果

Vegetation change in the Baringo Basin, East Africa across the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation 3.3–2.6 Ma

北半球冰川爆发3.3-2.6Ma期间东非巴林戈盆地的植被变化

• DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2019.109426
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Palaeoecology
• 作者: Lupien, Rachel L.;Russell, James M.;Yost, Chad L.;Kingston, John D.;Deino, Alan L.;Logan, Jon;Schuh, Anna;Cohen, Andrew S.
• 通讯作者: Cohen, Andrew S.

Abrupt climate change and its influences on hominin evolution during the early Pleistocene in the Turkana Basin, Kenya

• DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106531
• 发表时间: 2020-10
• 期刊: Quaternary Science Reviews
• 影响因子: 4
• 作者: R. Lupien;J. Russell;M. Grove;C. Beck;C. Feibel;A. Cohen