IPG: Collaborative Research: A high-resolution analysis of unique paleoenvironmental data from key hominin sites in East Africa

IPG：合作研究：对东非主要古人类遗址的独特古环境数据进行高分辨率分析

• 批准号: 1241742
• 负责人: Isla Castaneda
• 金额: $ 6.99万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 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: 2012-10-01 至 2017-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1241742&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: IPG; Collaborative; Research; resolution; analysis

The possibility that human evolution in Africa has been strongly influenced by Earth's climatic and environmental history over the last several million years has been an important question at the forefront of paleoanthropological research. One fundamental question is: can any of the potential envionmental drivers of evolutionary change be reconstructed with enough precision to allow us to relate them with confidence to the episodes of speciation, extinction and cultural evolution known to anthropologists, and thereby test their relationships in time and space?This team of paleoanthropologists and earth scientists plans to analyze climate and other environmental histories to provide direct tests of key hypotheses linking environmental history and mammal (including early human) evolution by collecting and analyzing detailed paleoenvironmental data at three key anthropological sites in Africa. They will collect continuous paleoenvironmental records by drilling long sediment cores from ancient lake beds in the northern Afar, Ethiopia (~3.8-2.9 million years ago-Ma), the Baringo Basin, Kenya (~3.2-2.35 Ma), and the Turkana Basin, Kenya (~2.3-1.42 Ma), and relate these records to the outcrops in the same basins that contain early human and other mammal fossils, as well as stone tools in the younger time periods. As a group these basins contain some of the most critical evidence for human evolutionary history in Africa. Although past investigators have reconstructed climate and other environmental histories from the outcrops in which the fossil humans and artifacts have been found, such environmental records are highly discontinuous due to the nature of the sediments where the fossils occur, and are unsuitable for many of the most informative geochemical records available today because of the weathering that has affected outcropping sediments. Drilling lakebeds near the fossil sites gets around these problems, because lake sediments accumulate much more continuously, and because drilling into the subsurface allows unweathered samples to be collected Funding for the drilling costs for this project has been secured from other sources: with the IPG funds the team will analyze the cores to generate quantitative and high resolution records of changes in temperature, precipitation, vegetation, fire and volcanic activity and other factors which may have influenced human evolution.The primary research goal is to obtain long cores from these basins, each of which span critical intervals in human evolution and are close to hominin fossil and archaeological sites. The researchers will apply state-of-the-art paleoenvironmental and paleoclimate methods to these cores to assemble high resolution records covering much of the past four million years of East African environmental history. The team will then evaluate existing hypotheses and generate new hypotheses linking climate history to early human physical and cultural evolutionary adaptations. The paleoenvironmental and paleoecological data collected from the drill cores will be linked directly in time and space to the nearby fossil human, mammal and stone tool records by way of the numerous volcanic ashes present in both the cores and outcrops, along with other dating techniques. By comparing the new records to similar records from nearby ocean sediment cores the researchers plan be able to distinguish local from global drivers of environmental change and in the process test a series of hypotheses linking key events in human evolution with climate and other aspects of environmental history. Finally, the team will use these new, combined paleoenvironmental and paleoanthropological data sets, combined with novel modeling techniques to better understand how landscape and climate change across various scales of time and space may have affected the availability and predictability of critical ecosystem resources upon which early humans would have depended. This project will greatly expand our understanding of African climate history and will be an opportunity to invigorate interest in human evolution and its relationship to climate with the US and African public. The project will train many American and African students during its field, analytical and internship/synthesis phases, and will generate numerous informal science learning opportunities through our collaborations with the National Museums of Kenya and Ethiopia and the Smithsonian Institution.

在过去的几百万年中，非洲人类进化受到地球气候和环境历史的强烈影响一直是古人类学研究的最前沿的重要问题。一个基本的问题是：对进化变化的任何潜在驱动因素都能以足够的精确度进行重建，以使我们有信心将它们与人类学家已知的形成，灭绝和文化进化的事件联系起来，从而在时间和空间中测试他们的关系吗？历史和哺乳动物（包括早期人类的进化）通过在非洲三个关键的人类学遗址收集和分析详细的古环境数据。他们将通过从埃塞俄比亚北部的古湖床（〜3.8-290万年前），肯尼亚的Baringo盆地（〜3.2-2.35 ma）（〜3.2-2.35 Ma）的北部古湖床（3.8-290万年前）中钻长的较长的沉积物岩心来收集连续的古环境记录，以及肯尼亚的Turkana Basin（〜2.3-1.42 MA），并将其与其他人类融合在一起，并与其他人相互融合。化石以及年轻时期的石材工具。作为一个整体，这些盆地包含非洲人类进化史的一些最关键的证据。尽管过去的调查人员已经从化石和人工制品的露头中重建了气候和其他环境历史，但由于化石发生的沉积物的性质，这种环境记录是高度连续的，并且由于当今有许多最有用的地球化学记录，因此由于有影响的雪橇式销售，因此无法使用化石的沉积物。化石站点附近的钻井湖床会解决这些问题，因为湖泊沉积物的积累得多，并且由于钻入地面钻探允许无限制的样品收集用于该项目的钻井成本的资金，从其他来源获得了钻探费用：与IPG资金相关的核心将分析核心的其他可能性和高分辨率的燃料，并在范围内进行燃料和高度散发的影响。人类进化。主要的研究目标是从这些盆地中获得长核，每个盆地都涵盖了人类进化的关键间隔，并且接近人类化石和考古遗址。研究人员将对这些核心采用最先进的古环境和古气候方法，以组装涵盖过去四百万东非环境历史的大部分时间的高分辨率记录。然后，团队将评估现有的假设，并产生新的假设，将气候历史与早期人类的物理和文化进化适应联系起来。从钻芯收集的古环境和古生物学数据将通过时间和空间直接连接到附近的化石人，哺乳动物和石材工具记录，并通过岩心和露头中的众多火山灰以及其他约会技术。通过将新记录与附近海洋沉积物核心的类似记录进行比较，研究人员计划能够将本地与环境变化的全球驱动力区分开，并在过程测试中，一系列假设将人类进化中的关键事件与气候和环境历史的其他方面联系起来。最后，团队将使用这些新的，古环境和古人类学数据集，结合新颖的建模技术，以更好地理解各个时代和空间各种规模的景观和气候变化如何影响重要的生态系统资源的可用性和可预测性，而早期人类则依赖于早期人类的依赖。该项目将大大扩展我们对非洲气候历史的理解，并将成为人们对人类进化的兴趣及其与美国和非洲公众的关系的机会。该项目将在其领域，分析和实习/综合阶段培训许多美国和非洲学生，并通过与肯尼亚和肯尼亚和埃塞俄比亚国家博物馆以及史密森尼机构的合作来产生许多非正式的科学学习机会。