Astronomically forced climate change in the Kenyan Rift Valley 2.7–2.55 Ma: implications for the evolution of early hominin ecosystems

Kingston, John D.; Deino, Alan L.; Edgar, Robert K.; Hill, Andrew

doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.12.007

Cited by 111 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 125 publications

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“…In eastern Africa, research has focused on developing environmental stratigraphies for deeper-water lakes and also on relating these environmental changes to orbital forcing (e.g. Kingston et al, 2007;Trauth et al, 2007). In contrast, the geological and hydrological characteristics of shallow water environments have received comparatively little attention.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wetland sedimentation and associated diatoms in the Pleistocene Olorgesailie Basin, southern Kenya Rift Valley

Owen

Renaut

Scott

et al. 2009

Sedimentary Geology

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wetland sedimentation and associated diatoms in the Pleistocene Olorgesailie Basin, southern Kenya Rift Valley

Owen

Renaut

Scott

et al. 2009

Sedimentary Geology

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“…8). The borehole was situated in very close proximity to exposures of variably dipping (20-42 • in the borehole) cyclic diatomites and mudstones of the upper Chemeron Formation, which had previously been shown by Deino et al (2006) and Kingston et al (2007) to reflect extreme precessional climate variability in the central Kenyan Rift during the Plio-Pleistocene transition. The lower ∼ 100 m of the core is coarser on average than the upper part of the core.…”

Section: Initial Coring and Core Description Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stratigraphic interval of the Chemeron Formation targeted here (3.3-2.6 Ma) contains ∼ 100 fossil vertebrate localities, including three hominin sites, providing an opportunity to explore the nature of environmental change associated with shifting insolation patterns (for example, documenting the lacustrine response to changing precipitation patterns at precessional, millennial, and perhaps even shorter timescales; e.g., Kingston et al, 2007;Wilson et al, 2014) and to assess specific terrestrial community responses to pervasive, short-term climatic change through the interval of Northern Hemisphere glacial intensification. At this time in eastern Africa we also observe the diversification of Paranthropus (a group of hominins with robust cranial features and large teeth for a strong bite force) and our own genus Homo, as well as the earliest evidence for stone tool-making in nearby West Turkana (Harmand et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Baringo Basin/tugen Hills Drilling Area Kenyamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On intermediate timescales (10 4 -10 6 years), there is controversy regarding the relative importance of high-latitude glacial cycles, Walker circulation intensification, and annual-to decadalscale variability in atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperatures such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole (ENSO/IOD) for regional aridity, lake expansions, and seasonality (deMenocal, 2004;Trauth et al, 2009), all of which could have influenced the course of evolution in the lake-rich Rift Valley. On Milankovitch (∼ 100, 40, and 20 kyr) and shorter (10 1 -10 4 years) timescales, there is debate about the role of orbital forcing and high-latitude glacial to millennial-scale events in driving wet-dry cycles that increased environmental pressures on African ecosystems (e.g., Larasoaña et al, 2003;Kingston et al, 2007;Scholz et al, 2007;Campisano and Feibel, 2007;Armitage et al, 2011;Blome et al, 2012), and how these might have influenced resource acquisition (Reed and Rector, 2007) and other ecological parameters affecting hominins. Assessing these hypotheses is complicated by the need to understand the role of biotic drivers of adaptation, such as competition and predation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project: inferring the environmental context of human evolution from eastern African rift lake deposits

Cohen¹,

Campisano²,

Arrowsmith³

et al. 2016

Sci. Dril.

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Abstract. The role that climate and environmental history may have played in influencing human evolution has been the focus of considerable interest and controversy among paleoanthropologists for decades. Prior attempts to understand the environmental history side of this equation have centered around the study of outcrop sediments and fossils adjacent to where fossil hominins (ancestors or close relatives of modern humans) are found, or from the study of deep sea drill cores. However, outcrop sediments are often highly weathered and thus are unsuitable for some types of paleoclimatic records, and deep sea core records come from long distances away from the actual fossil and stone tool remains. The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) was developed to address these issues. The project has focused its efforts on the eastern African Rift Valley, where much of the evidence for early hominins has been recovered. We have collected about 2 km of sediment drill core from six basins in Kenya and Ethiopia, in lake deposits immediately adjacent to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites. Collectively these cores cover in time many of the key transitions and critical intervals in human evolutionary history over the last 4 Ma, such as the earliest stone tools, the origin of our own genus Homo, and the earliest anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Here we document the initial field, physical property, and core description results of the 2012-2014 HSPDP coring campaign.

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“…The 3-2-Ma interval encompassed by these lake beds is also a period of important events in this time period, such as the first documented stone tools, the first fossils of Homo, and the evolution of several other hominin species. A sequence of well-dated, diatomaceous lake beds in the Tugen Hills area displays strong cyclicity interpreted as correlating to orbital (Milankovitch) time scales, making this an optimal site for testing ideas about linkages between hominin evolutionary events and climatic variability (Deino et al, 2006;Kingston et al, 2007). Giday WoldeGabriel discussed the potential of drilling in the Chew Bahir Basin in southern Ethiopia.…”

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confidence: 99%

Understaning Paleoclimate and Human Evolution Through the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project

Cohen

Arrowsmith

Behrensmeyer

et al. 2009

Scientific Drilling

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Understanding the evolution of humans and our close relatives is one of the enduring scientific issues of modern times. Since the time of Charles Darwin, scientists have speculated on how and when we evolved and what conditions drove this evolutionary story. The detective work required to address these questions is necessarily interdisciplinary, involving research in anthropology, archaeology, human genetics and genomics, and the earth sciences. In addition to the difficult tasks of finding, describing, and interpreting hominin fossils (the taxonomic tribe which includes Homo sapiens and our close fossil relatives from the last 6 Ma), much of modern geological research associated with paleoanthropology involves understanding the geochronologic and paleoenvironmental context of those fossils. When were they entombed in the sediments? What were the local and regional climatic conditions that early hominins experienced? How did local (watershed scale) and regional climate processes combine with regional tectonic boundary conditions to influence hominin food resources, foraging patterns, and demography? How and when did these conditions vary from humid to dry, or cool to warm? Can the history of those conditions (Vrba, 1988;Potts, 1996) be related to the evolution, diversification, stasis, or extinction of hominin species?Most of the efforts to address these questions to date have centered on evidence from outcrops where the hominin fossils have been collected. Earth scientists have made great strides in understanding these contextual questions using fluvial, paleosol, and marginal lacustrine sediments associated with hominin fossils; however, this approach has its limitations. Outcrops, for example, cannot normally provide us with continuous, unweathered stratigraphic sections needed to address many questions relating events in hominin evolution and environmental change. The places where hominins actually lived (literally, above the water table) tend to have only discontinuous and relatively low resolution lithostratigraphic records of climate and other aspects of environmental change.

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Astronomically forced climate change in the Kenyan Rift Valley 2.7–2.55 Ma: implications for the evolution of early hominin ecosystems

Cited by 111 publications

References 125 publications

Wetland sedimentation and associated diatoms in the Pleistocene Olorgesailie Basin, southern Kenya Rift Valley

Wetland sedimentation and associated diatoms in the Pleistocene Olorgesailie Basin, southern Kenya Rift Valley

The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project: inferring the environmental context of human evolution from eastern African rift lake deposits

Understaning Paleoclimate and Human Evolution Through the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project

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