Hominid Habitats in the Turkana Basin

对肯尼亚北部图尔卡纳盆地的研究目前正在为东非早期人类的发展提供重要证据。很少有地方像今天这样完美地适合回答古人类学中提出的一些主要问题。这在很大程度上是因为我们对包裹着化石和文物的沉积物的详细地层关系、年代学和环境意义的了解程度。将这种知识的地理范围扩大到盆地的外围地区有相当大的希望，因为最近在那里发现的矿藏代表了迄今鲜为人知的习性。这项提议是为了继续研究图尔卡纳盆地层序和从相同来源喷发的其他远海沉积(包括大水河谷、巴林戈盆地和阿尔伯特裂谷)的火成岩地层学，以便能够在时间上整合这些广泛分布的地点。此外，继续研究图尔卡纳盆地沉积的详细地层学和古环境背景，将进一步完善我们对恢复早期人类最丰富记录之一的背景的理解。

Studies in the Turkana Basin of northern Kenya are currently yielding important evidence of the development of early humans in East Africa. Few localities are as ideally suited to answer some of the major questions being asked in paleoanthropology today. This is largely due to the extent of our knowledge of the detailed stratigraphic relations, chronology and environmental significance of the deposits which enclose the fossils and artifacts there. Expanding the geographic range of that knowledge to peripheral areas of the basin holds considerable promise, as recently discovered deposits there represent habits thus far poorly known. This proposal is for continued study of the tephrostratigraphy of the Turkana Basin sequence and of other distal deposits (including the Awash Valley, Baringo Basin and Lake Albert Rift) erupted from the same sources in order to allow temporal integration of these widespread localities. In addition, continued study of the detailed stratigraphy and paleoenvironmental context of the Turkana Basin deposits will further refine our understanding of the context from which one of the richest record of early humans has been recovered.