Into Africa: The Initial Colonization of Africa by Early Cenozoic Anthropoids

这个项目调查了早期类人猿灵长类动物（猴子、猿和人类的灭绝亲戚）最初殖民非洲的进化后果。一个由匹兹堡卡内基自然历史博物馆、法国普瓦提埃大学和利比亚的黎波里大学的科学家组成的国际团队，将在利比亚南部杜尔塔拉悬崖沿线的始新世地层中寻找与已知最早的非洲类人猿有关的其他化石和相关形式的数据。该项目将为卡内基博物馆的两名博士后研究人员以及来自美国和利比亚的本科生和研究生提供培训机会。研究结果将通过学术出版物、大众媒体、博物馆展览、公开讲座和研讨会传播。了解入侵生物群体对新大陆的殖民如何影响入侵者本身和他们遇到的当地生物群是有机生物学中一个普遍存在的问题。直到最近，人们才明白类人猿灵长类在进化过程中经历了这样一个关键事件，当它们从祖先的亚洲家园殖民到当时的非洲岛屿大陆时。这个研究项目提供了新的数据，通过关注利比亚南部最近发现的已知最古老的非洲类人猿的化石遗址，将有助于限制这一殖民事件的性质和时间。通过从这些遗址中恢复更多的化石和其他地质数据，将有可能评估：(1)早期非洲类人猿是否是一个（而不是多个）祖先亚洲形式的后代；(2)早期非洲类人猿在成功殖民该大陆后是否经历了剧烈的进化辐射，这可能与现代类人猿解剖特征的进化有关；(3)其他亚洲哺乳动物是否在类人猿在非洲取得最初立足点的大致同一时间殖民了非洲。该项目及其国际组成部分得到了美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室全球风险基金的联合支持。

This project investigates the evolutionary consequences of the initial colonization of Africa by early anthropoid primates (extinct relatives of monkeys, apes and humans). Working in Eocene strata exposed along the Dur At-Talah escarpment in southern Libya, an international team of scientists based at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the University of Poitiers in France, and Tripoli University in Libya will search for additional fossils and related forms of data bearing on the earliest known African anthropoids. The project will provide training opportunities for two postdoctoral researchers based at the Carnegie Museum as well as undergraduate and graduate students from the United States and Libya. Results will be disseminated through scholarly publications, popular media, museum exhibitions, and public lectures and seminars.Understanding how the colonization of new landmasses by invading groups of organisms affects both the invaders themselves and the local biota they encounter is a widespread problem in organismal biology. Only recently has it become apparent that anthropoid primates experienced such a pivotal event during their evolution, when they colonized what was then the island continent of Africa from their ancestral homeland in Asia. This research project provides new data that will help constrain the nature and timing of this colonization event by focusing on fossil sites in southern Libya that have recently yielded the oldest known African anthropoids. By recovering additional fossils and other geological data from these sites, it will be possible to assess: (1) whether early African anthropoids are descendants of one (as opposed to multiple) ancestral Asian forms; (2) whether early African anthropoids experienced a dramatic evolutionary radiation after their successful colonization of that landmass, which may have been related to the evolution of modern anthropoid anatomical features; and (3) whether other Asian mammals may have colonized Africa at roughly the same time that anthropoids achieved their initial toehold there.The project and its international components are receiving joint support within NSF from the Global Venture Fund of the Office of International Science and Engineering.