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Posted on 10/09/2010 4:33:45 AM PDT by decimon
Olduvai Gorge is a steep-sided ravine on the edge of the Serengeti Plain, East Africa, and is home to some of the world's most important fossil hominins. Geologists are investigating the chemical composition of carbonate rocks that lie beneath the surfaces where early human fossils have been uncovered. The data will help an international team of geologists, paleoanthropologists and archaeologists understand how environmental pressures may have influenced the development of human ancestors and their use of the land.
Professor Ian Stanistreet, from the School of Environmental Sciences, said: "Research findings so far suggest that environmental changes, such as very dry conditions to very wet, were more extreme and took place more frequently than previously thought. It is currently unclear how these changes might have contributed to human evolution, but evidence indicates that an ability to cope with hostile and rapidly changing environments may have characterised and shaped the development of the human race."
The team is investigating elements in the mineral calcium carbonate, which were deposited in the mud and soil in and around a lake between two and 1.7 million years ago. Carbonates formed in the semi-arid environment of the Olduvai Gorge through evaporation and concentration of soil and lake water. The chemical makeup of calcium carbonate mirrors the chemical composition of the water from which it came, allowing scientists to understand what the original soil water was like and what influenced it, such as climate and vegetation growth.
Elisabeth Rushworth explains: "We are looking at deposits of calcium carbonates, from the oldest samples to the youngest, over a period of 300,000 years. Geochemical analyses allow us to build a picture of what the environment was like and the kind of land that our ancestors would have lived and worked on."
Professor Jim Marshall added: "There are times when the climate was very wet and the soil may show signs of rainwater and at other times there will be traces of water from the lake which was very alkaline. The lake is now extinct, but our ancestors would have depended on the water and vegetation that grew around it. By understanding the chemical signals in the rocks we aim to learn more about the environmental stresses that would have affected our early ancestors."
Archeological finds in the Olduvai Gorge include stone tools, and skeletal remains of Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus, as well as bones of, now extinct, wild animals.
The Liverpool team's research is funded by the Leakey Foundation, the National Environment Research Council (NERC), and the International Association of Sedimentologists. The Olduvai Landscape and Paleo-anthropology Project (OLAPP) includes scientists from institutions in the UK, US, Tanzania, South Africa, Germany and Spain.
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Notes to editors:
1. The University of Liverpool is a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive institutions in the UK. It attracts collaborative and contract research commissions from a wide range of national and international organisations valued at more than £98 million annually.
2. Founded in 1968, The Leakey Foundation's mission is to increase scientific knowledge, education, and public understanding of human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival. The Foundation awards an average of $600,000, annually in general research grants, though two granting sessions. www.leakeyfoundation.org
Ping
So it wasn’t mankind that caused climate change, but rather climate change that caused mankind...
Would someone please send a case of Rubic’s Cubes to these people?
First Neanderthal: "Ugh. Ugh, ugh grunt" (Land frozen)
Other Neanderthal: "Ugh, ugh grunt, ugh, grrr." (Let's find warmer land)
First Neanderthal: "Aack" (Okay)
Where's my Nobel Prize?
So, if I understand this correctly, there were catastrophic climate changes brought on by Africans’ careless use of their environment? Well, I think we will all be needing a major (and ongoing) apology from current Africans and their disapora and a massive transfer of wealth as compensation for this.
You can only receive that prize if you answer the following 2 questions correctly:
“Did Bush steal the 2000 election and do you hate GOD?”
LLS
So there are natural forces driving climate change, and they were there before humans had any effect on climate.
Can the correct result be found using an AND gate?
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Whole communities of ape-like creatures may have been killed in volcanic disasters that struck East Africa 18 million years ago... the once active volcano Kisingiri... contained fossils of what is believed to be a forerunner of humans called Proconsul... they may have been caught by a pyroclastic flow... the abundance of the hominoid fossils may represent "death assemblages" -- whole populations wiped out simultaneously by "glowing cloud" eruptions. [Monday, May 3, 1999, "Early volcano victims discovered"]
New chronology for theNew total-fusion K-Ar ages indicate that all of the fossiliferous formations that make up the lower part of the Early Miocene Kisingiri sequence in western Kenya at Rusinga Island, Mfwangano Island, and Karungu were deposited during an interval of less than 0.5 million years at c. 17.8 Ma ago. This contrasts markedly with K-Ar ages previously published from these detrital-tuffaceous formations, which suggested that they were deposited over an interval of as much as 7 million years between 23 and 16 Ma, overlapping the age-ranges of all other East African Early Miocene sites including Koru, Songhor, Napak, Bukwa, Loperot, Muruarot and Buluk. In addition, the analytical problems revealed by the new Kisingiri results cast doubt on biotite ages which provide dating for the most important sites. Thus, the strong differences between the Kisingiri fauna and those of Koru, Sonhor and Napak, long held to be due to ecology because of the apparent overlap in ages, may actually be due to a difference in time. If this view of the geochronology is correct, it may now be possible to identify adaptive trends and evolutionary succession in the East African Early Miocene faunas.
Early Miocene mammalian faunas
of Kisingiri, Western Kenya
R. E. Drake, J. A. Van Couvering,
M. H. Pickford, G. H. Curtis
& J. A. Harris
Journal of the Geological Society; 1988; v. 145; issue.3; p. 479-491
The Ape in the Tree:
An Intellectual and Natural History of Proconsul
by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman
other hc edition
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Sure, but what would we do with unopened cases of condoms that A) we paid for in the first place and B) have probably exceeded their expiration date.
[singing] You provide the night, baby, Olduvai the gorge.
May be, but there’s no way those fossils could be you, so forget it. ;’)
Is it: We find bones of, that maybe something, that might be a precursor but then again lived or didn't live in a wet or dry climate and moved when they couldn't have mushrooms with the roast. Man, I should have studied Paleontology when I was in school rather than Engineering.
If you were a “scientist” as opposed to an engineer you’d be practical enough to know that:
Maybe + could have = grants
In modern science, clarity and proof don’t ever lead to big bucks.
:-)
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