Exploration for Cenozoic Fossil-Bearing Deposits in the Atbara Valley, Sudan

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After a successful initial survey, support is requested to develop a reconnaissance grant into a 3-year fieldwork project targeting a sequence of Middle to Late Pleistocene fossiliferous deposits along the Upper Atbara and Setit Rivers in southeastern Sudan. Our initial DFG and National Geographic-funded survey took place in January 2018 and resulted in the discovery of numerous new fossil sites across some 200 km and in up to a 50m-thick record of alluvial sediments of the Upper Atbara drainage basin, and the collection of some 160 fossil specimens of large mammals. Hominins were active on the landscape as evidenced by abundant stone tools, and they are probably to be found as fossils as well. Some of our newly discovered fossil sites may be older and younger than previously known deposits in the area, and therefore have the potential to provide an in situ record of evolution and climate change over the last 1 million years. This time period is generally underexplored in the African record (in comparison to the Plio-Pleistocene) and such a fossil, archaeological, and geological sequence in Sudan could rival that of the classic eastern African Rift sites. Support is requested to fund three field seasons and for the analysis of resulting data. Main questions include the evolution of modern African mammal ecology, the technological transition from the Acheulean to the Middle Stone Age, and phases of evolution of the Nile River watershed.