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: 1123000
• 负责人: Andrew Cohen
• 金额: $ 34.49万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 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 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1123000&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.

了解地球系统过程是否以及如何影响人类进化是一项挑战，引起了科学家和公众的广泛兴趣。美国国家研究委员会最近的一份报告指出，对支撑人类进化的环境动力学的理解已经成熟，可以取得重大进展。这笔赠款汇集了具有广泛专业知识的科学家，该团队将扩展古环境数据集，有关环境与人类起源之间关系的假设必须以此为基础。该团队将从埃塞俄比亚和肯尼亚精心挑选的五个古代湖床中的长钻岩心中回收岩心。这些遗址涵盖了新近纪晚期和第四纪的几个重要区间，靠近关键的古人类学遗址，这将提供有关古代人类居住地区的重要的新环境信息。这里请求的资金将支持与钻探和初步岩心描述相关的运营成本。该项目的目标是从关键人类学遗址附近的沉积物中产生高质量的古环境数据。钻探可以从产生古人类化石的同一床中收集未改变的样本，这些近乎原始的样本包含地球化学代理数据，可用于破译该地区的环境历史。该团队将把这些钻芯与附近的海洋记录以及附近含有古人类和其他脊椎动物化石的露头记录联系起来，并通过使用火山灰、古地磁学和其他直接年代测定技术来将文物组合联系起来。来自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，同时允许检查变化间隔内的季节尺度环境变化。该项目将从埃塞俄比亚北阿瓦什和楚巴赫盆地以及肯尼亚西图尔卡纳、巴林戈和马加迪盆地的九个钻孔中收集约 2400m 的岩心。这些地区产生了世界上一些最重要的古人类化石和文物遗址，直接激发了当前有关人类进化和环境动态的争论。所有地点都包含跨越过去 400 万年大部分时间的长期、连续的气候记录，并且是对一系列环境强迫机制明显敏感的区域。这些核心将非常适合生成定量古气温、古降水和其他环境重建，这对于了解早期人类经历的环境动态至关重要。这些数据还将为评估非洲古气候的大尺度和中尺度模型以及将早期人类生存至关重要的气候、地形、水文和植被资源联系起来的模型提供强有力的经验基础。该项目包括为九名美国和非洲学生提供培训机会，包括通过亚利桑那大学的仙人掌计划，重点开展外展工作，吸引美国代表性不足的少数族裔本科生。许多肯尼亚和埃塞俄比亚科学家主要参与该项目，并且在该项目的各个阶段将为更多初级非洲科学家提供培训和研究机会。公共推广活动将通过美国和非洲的三个博物馆合作伙伴开展。过去，当地社区通过对钻孔进行下套管，将其用作水井，从科学钻探活动中受益。该项目收集的岩心样本和数据将通过国家湖相岩心实验室向广大科学界提供， ICDP NGDC 和史密森尼人类起源数据库。钻探作业将由国际大陆钻探计划共同资助。