Collaborative Research: The Hominid Sites And Paleolakes Drilling Project: Acquiring a High Resolution Paleoenvironmental Context of Human Evolution

合作研究：原始人类遗址和古湖泊钻探项目：获取人类进化的高分辨率古环境背景

• 批准号: 1123980
• 负责人: Anders Noren
• 金额: $ 31.95万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-15 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1123980&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Hominid; Sites; Paleolakes

Understanding whether and how Earth system processes impacted human evolution is a challenge that generates broad interest among scientists and the general public. A recent NRC report noted how understanding of the environmental dynamics underpinning human evolution is ripe for major advances. This grant brings together scientists with a breadth of expertise, and this team will expand the paleoenvironmental data set upon which hypotheses about the relationship between environment and human origins must be based. The team will recover cores from long drill cores from five carefully selected ancient lake beds in Ethiopia and Kenya. These sites cover several important intervals of the late Neogene and Quaternary, close to key paleoanthropological sites, that will provide important new environmental information about the locales inhabited by ancient hominins. Funding requested here will support operational costs related to drilling and the initial core descriptions.The goal of this project is to produce high-quality paleoenvironmental data from deposits close to key anthropological sites. Drilling allows the collection of unaltered samples from the same beds producing the hominin fossils, These near-pristine samples contain geochemical proxy data that can be used to decipher the region's environmental history. The team will correlate these drill cores to nearby marine records and to nearby outcrop records containing hominin and other vertebrate fossils, and to artifact assemblages by using tephras, paleomagnetism and other direct dating techniques. Drill cores from distal ancient lake beds avoid outcrop sample problems such as weathering, lacunae, and discontinuous expression of paleoenvironmental variables, while allowing examination of seasonal-scale environmental variability in varved intervals. The project will collect ~2400m of cores from nine bore holes at the North Awash and Chew Bahir Basins in Ethiopia, and the West Turkana, Baringo and Magadi Basins in Kenya. These areas have yielded some of the most important fossil hominin and artifact sites in the world, directly stimulating much of the current debate about human evolution and environmental dynamics. All sites contain long, continuous climate records spanning much of the last 4 million years, and are areas which are demonstrably sensitive to a range of environmental forcing mechanisms. The cores will be ideal for generating quantitative paleotemperature, paleoprecipitation, and other environmental reconstructions critical for understanding the environmental dynamics that early hominins experienced. These data will also provide a strong empirical base for evaluating both large and mesoscale models of African paleoclimate, and models linking climate, orography, hydrology and vegetation resources critical for early hominin survival.The project includes training opportunities for nine American and African students, including focused outreach efforts to attract U.S. under-represented minority undergraduates through the University of Arizona's Saguaro Program. Many Kenyan and Ethiopian scientists are centrally involved in the project, and training and research opportunities will exist for more junior African scientists at all stages of the project. Public outreach activities will be carried out through three museum partners in the US and Africa. In the past, the local communities have benefited from scientific drilling activities by casing the boreholes so that they can be used as water wells.Core samples and data collected by this project will be available to the general scientific community through the National Lacustrine Core Laboratory, ICDP NGDC, and the Smithsonian's Human Origins Database. The drilling operations will be co-funded by the International Continental Drilling Programme.

了解地球体系是否影响人类进化是一项挑战，它在科学家和公众之间产生了广泛的兴趣。 NRC最近的一份报告指出，对人类进化的基础环境动态的理解如何为重大进展而成熟。这项赠款将科学家汇集在一起​​，具有广泛的专业知识，该团队将扩大古环境数据集，其中关于环境与人类起源之间的关系的假设必须基于。该团队将从埃塞俄比亚和肯尼亚的五个精心选择的古老湖床中恢复岩心。这些地点涵盖了已故新近纪和第四纪的几个重要间隔，靠近关键的古人类学遗址，这些区域将提供有关古代人类居住的地区的重要新环境信息。此处要求的资金将支持与钻探和最初的核心描述有关的运营成本。该项目的目的是从靠近关键人类学地点的存款中生产高质量的古环境数据。钻孔允许收集来自产生人类化石的同一床的不变样品，这些近原始样品包含地球化学代理数据，可用于破译该地区的环境历史。该团队将将这些钻头与附近的海洋记录以及包含人类和其他脊椎动物化石的附近露头记录相关联，并通过使用Tephras，Paleomagnetism和其他直接约会技术来将其与人工制品组合相关联。远端古湖床的钻芯避免了露头样本问题，例如风化，空隙和古环境变量的不连续表达，同时允许检查季节性环境变化。该项目将从埃塞俄比亚的North Awash和Chew Bahir盆地以及肯尼亚的西图尔卡纳，巴林戈和马加迪盆地的北部的九个孔中收集约2400m的核心。这些领域产生了世界上一些最重要的化石人类和人工制品场所，直接刺激了当前关于人类进化和环境动态的许多辩论。所有站点都包含跨越过去400万年的大部分地区的长期，连续的气候记录，并且对各种环境强迫机制显着敏感。这些核心将是产生定量古温过温，古沉淀和其他环境重建的理想选择，这对于理解早期人类早期人物所经历的环境动态至关重要。 These data will also provide a strong empirical base for evaluating both large and mesoscale models of African paleoclimate, and models linking climate, orography, hydrology and vegetation resources critical for early hominin survival.The project includes training opportunities for nine American and African students, including focused outreach efforts to attract U.S. under-represented minority undergraduates through the University of Arizona's Saguaro Program.许多肯尼亚人和埃塞俄比亚科学家都参与了该项目，并且在该项目的各个阶段，将为更多的非洲科学家提供培训和研究机会。公共外展活动将通过美国和非洲的三个博物馆合作伙伴进行。过去，当地社区通过插入钻孔来从科学钻井活动中受益，从而可以用作水井。该项目收集的核心样本和数据将通过国家Lacoline核心实验室，ICDP NGDC和史密森尼人的人类origins数据库提供给通用科学界的一般科学界。钻探行动将由国际大陆钻探计划共同资助。