@article{f2f123c92766496da16d5d5808bdc3e1,
title = "Reconstructing the Environmental Context of Human Origins in Eastern Africa Through Scientific Drilling",
abstract = "Paleoanthropologists have long speculated about the role of environmental change in shaping human evolution in Africa. In recent years, drill cores of late Neogene lacustrine sedimentary rocks have yielded valuable high-resolution records of climatic and ecosystem change. Eastern African Rift sediments (primarily lake beds) provide an extraordinary range of data in close proximity to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites, allowing critical study of hypotheses that connect environmental history and hominin evolution. We review recent drill-core studies spanning the Plio-Pleistocene boundary (an interval of hominin diversification, including the earliest members of our genus Homo and the oldest stone tools), and the Mid-Upper Pleistocene (spanning the origin of Homo sapiens in Africa and our early technological and dispersal history). Proposed drilling of Africa's oldest lakes promises to extend such records back to the late Miocene. ",
keywords = "continental scientific drilling, East African Rift, human evolution, paleoclimate",
author = "Cohen, {Andrew S.} and Campisano, {Christopher J.} and Arrowsmith, {J. Ramo acute n.} and Asfawossen Asrat and Beck, {Catherine C.} and Behrensmeyer, {Anna K.} and Deino, {Alan L.} and Feibel, {Craig S.} and Verena Foerster and Kingston, {John D.} and Lamb, {Henry F.} and Lowenstein, {Tim K.} and Lupien, {Rachel L.} and Veronica Muiruri and Olago, {Daniel O.} and Owen, {R. Bernhart} and Richard Potts and Russell, {James M.} and Frank Schaebitz and Stone, {Jeffery R.} and Trauth, {Martin H.} and Yost, {Chad L.}",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved. Financial support for this research was provided by ICDP, the National Science Foundation (EAR-0602350, EAR- 1123942, BCS-1241859, EAR-1338553, BCS-1241790, and EAR-1322017), the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/K014560/1), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) priority program SPP 1006 (F.S.: SCHA 472/13 and /18; M.H.T.: TR 419/8, /10 and /16) and the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 806, DFG Project Number 57444011 at the University of Cologne, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (HKBU12300815; 12304018), the Peter Buck Fund for Human Origins Research (Smithsonian Institution), the William H. Donner Foundation, the Ruth and Vernon Taylor Foundation, Whitney and Betty MacMillan, the Institute of Human Origins (IHO, Arizona State University), and the Smithsonian{\textquoteright}s Human Origins Program. ",
year = "2022",
month = may,
day = "31",
doi = "10.1146/annurev-earth-031920-081947",
language = "English",
volume = "50",
pages = "451--476",
journal = "Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences",
issn = "0084-6597",
publisher = "Annual Reviews Inc.",
}
