Proposed Workshop: "African Climate Change and Human Evolution"

这项提议支持一个为期两天的研讨会，以调查这一问题的新调查路线？非洲气候变化是否塑造了人类进化？2012年4月，这一学科的18名世界专家聚集在拉蒙特，以澄清这一问题的边界条件以及在哪里可以取得进展。这个问题带有一些具体和新颖的调查思路，因此研讨会形式将带来推动这一问题的最有成效的机会。会议重点讨论了上新世-更新世东非气候趋势及其变异性，以及非洲哺乳动物类群进化和适应性变化的证据。美国国家科学基金会最近资助的《理解气候？S对人类进化的影响？》报告建议？将学科整合和学者培训提升到一个新的水平，以推动一个高度合作的企业的发展。这次研讨会聚集了来自不同学科的专家，明确的目的是制定一条解决这一首要问题的研究道路，从而使这些合作成为可能。

ABSTRACTThis proposal supports a two day workshop to investigate new lines of inquiry into the question ?Did African climate change shape human evolution?? Eighteen world experts in this discipline were assembled at Lamont in April 2012 to clarify the boundary conditions of the question and where advances can be made. The question carries with it some specific and novel lines of investigation so a workshop format would invite the most productive opportunity to advance this question. The meeting focused on Pliocene-Pleistocene East African climate trends, their variability, and evidence for evolutionary and adaptive changes in African mammalian taxa. The recent NSF funded NRC report on ?Understanding Climate?s Influence on Human Evolution? recommends ?a new level of integration of disciplines and training of scholars in ways that motivate the growth of a richly collaborative enterprise.? This workshop enabled these collaborations by gathering specialists from diverse disciplines with the expressed purpose of developing a research path forward to tackle this first order problem.