TY  - JOUR
A1  - Owen, Richard Bernhart
A1  - Muiruri, Veronica M.
A1  - Lowenstein, Tim K.
A1  - Renaut, Robin W.
A1  - Rabideaux, Nathan
A1  - Luo, Shangde
A1  - Deino, Alan L.
A1  - Sier, Mark J.
A1  - Dupont-Nivet, Guillaume
A1  - McNulty, Emma P.
A1  - Leet, Kennie
A1  - Cohen, Andrew
A1  - Campisano, Christopher
A1  - Deocampo, Daniel
A1  - Shen, Chuan-Chou
A1  - Billingsley, Anne
A1  - Mbuthia, Anthony
T1  - Progressive aridification in East Africa over the last half million years and implications for human evolution
JF  - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
N2  - Evidence for Quaternary climate change in East Africa has been derived from outcrops on land and lake cores and from marine dust, leaf wax, and pollen records. These data have previously been used to evaluate the impact of climate change on hominin evolution, but correlations have proved to be difficult, given poor data continuity and the great distances between marine cores and terrestrial basins where fossil evidence is located. Here, we present continental coring evidence for progressive aridification since about 575 thousand years before present (ka), based on Lake Magadi (Kenya) sediments. This long-term drying trend was interrupted by many wet-dry cycles, with the greatest variability developing during times of high eccentricity-modulated precession. Intense aridification apparent in the Magadi record took place between 525 and 400 ka, with relatively persistent arid conditions after 350 ka and through to the present. Arid conditions in the Magadi Basin coincide with the Mid-Brunhes Event and overlap with mammalian extinctions in the South Kenya Rift between 500 and 400 ka. The 525 to 400 ka arid phase developed in the South Kenya Rift between the period when the last Acheulean tools are reported (at about 500 ka) and before the appearance of Middle Stone Age artifacts (by about 320 ka). Our data suggest that increasing Middle- to Late-Pleistocene aridification and environmental variability may have been drivers in the physical and cultural evolution of Homo sapiens in East Africa.
KW  - Quaternary
KW  - paleoclimate
KW  - paleolimnology
KW  - hominins
KW  - Lake Magadi
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1801357115
SN  - 0027-8424
SN  - 1091-6490
VL  - 115
IS  - 44
SP  - 11174
EP  - 11179
PB  - National Academy of Sciences
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Deino, Alan L.
A1  - Sier, Mark Jan
A1  - Garello, Dominique
A1  - Keller, B.
A1  - Kingston, John
A1  - Scott, Jennifer J.
A1  - Dupont-Nivet, Guillaume
A1  - Cohen, Andrew
T1  - Chronostratigraphy of the Baringo-Tugen-Barsemoi (HSPDP-BTB13-1A) core-Ar-40/Ar-39 dating, magnetostratigraphy, tephrostratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy and Bayesian age modeling
JF  - Palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology : an international journal for the geo-sciences
N2  - The Baringo-Tugen-Barsemoi 2013 drillcore (BTB13), acquired as part of the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project, recovered 228 m of fluviolacustrine sedimentary rocks and tuffs spanning a similar to 3.29-2.56 Ma interval of the highly fossiliferous and hominin-bearing Chemeron Formation, Tugen Hills, Kenya. Here we present a Bayesian stratigraphic age model for the core employing chronostratigraphic control points derived from Ar-40/Ar-39 dating of tuffs from core and outcrop, Ar-40/Ar-39 age calibration of related outcrop diatomaceous units, and core magnetostratigraphy. The age model reveals three main intervals with distinct sediment accumulation rates: an early rapid phase from 3.2 to 2.9 Ma; a relatively slow phase from 2.9 to 2.7 Ma; and the highest rate of accumulation from 2.7 to 2.6 Ma. The intervals of rapid accumulation correspond to periods of high Earth orbital eccentricity, whereas the slow accumulation interval corresponds to low eccentricity at 2.9-2.7 Ma, suggesting that astronomically mediated climate processes may be responsible for the observed changes in sediment accumulation rate. Lacustrine transgression-regression events, as delineated using sequence stratigraphy, dominantly operate on precession scale, particularly within the high eccentricity periods. A set of erosively based fluvial conglomerates correspond to the 2.9-2.7 Ma interval, which could be related to either the depositional response to low eccentricity or to the development of unconformities due to local tectonic activity. Age calibration of core magnetic susceptibility and gamma density logs indicates a close temporal correspondence between a shift from high- to low-frequency signal variability at similar to 3 Ma, approximately coincident the end of the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period, and the beginning of the cooling of world climate leading to the initiation of Northern Hemispheric glaciation c. 2.7 Ma. BTB13 and the Baringo Basin records may thus provide evidence of a connection between high-latitude glaciation and equatorial terrestrial climate toward the end of the Pliocene.
KW  - Chemeron Formation
KW  - Pliocene
KW  - Eccentricity
KW  - Precession
KW  - Paleoclimate
KW  - Paleolimnology
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2019.109258
SN  - 0031-0182
SN  - 1872-616X
VL  - 532
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sier, Mark J.
A1  - Langereis, Cor G.
A1  - Dupont-Nivet, Guillaume
A1  - Feibel, Craig S.
A1  - Joordens, Josephine C. A.
A1  - van der Lubbe, Jeroen Fiji.
A1  - Beck, Catherine C.
A1  - Olago, Daniel
A1  - Cohen, Andrew
T1  - The top of the Olduvai Subchron in a high-resolution magnetostratigraphy from the West Turkana core WTK13, hominin sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP)
JF  - Quaternary geochronology : the international research and review journal on advances in quaternary dating techniques
N2  - One of the major challenges in understanding the evolution of our own species is identifying the role climate change has played in the evolution of hominin species. To clarify the influence of climate, we need long and continuous high-resolution paleoclimate records, preferably obtained from hominin-bearing sediments, that are well-dated by tephro- and magnetostratigraphy and other methods. This is hindered, however, by the fact that fossil-bearing outcrop sediments are often discontinuous, and subject to weathering, which may lead to oxidation and remagnetization. To obtain fresh, unweathered sediments, the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) collected a ∼216-meter core (WTK13) in 2013 from Early Pleistocene Paleolake Lorenyang deposits in the western Turkana Basin (Kenya). Here, we present the magnetostratigraphy of the WTK13 core, providing a first age model for upcoming HSPDP paleoclimate and paleoenvrionmental studies on the core sediments. Rock magnetic analyses reveal the presence of iron sulfides carrying the remanent magnetizations. To recover polarity orientation from the near-equatorial WTK13 core drilled at 5°N, we developed and successfully applied two independent drill-core reorientation methods taking advantage of (1) the sedimentary fabric as expressed in the Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) and (2) the occurrence of a viscous component oriented in the present day field. The reoriented directions reveal a normal to reversed polarity reversal identified as the top of the Olduvai Subchron. From this excellent record, we find no evidence for the ‘Vrica Subchron’ previously reported in the area. We suggest that outcrop-based interpretations supporting the presence of the Vrica Subchron have been affected by the oxidation of iron sulfides initially present in the sediments -as evident in the core record- and by subsequent remagnetization. We discuss the implications of the observed geomagnetic record for human evolution studies.
KW  - Paleolake Lorenyang
KW  - Magnetostratigraphy
KW  - Olduvai Subchron
KW  - Vrica Subchron
KW  - Drill-core reorientation
KW  - ICDP
KW  - Paleoclimate
KW  - Hominin evolution
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2017.08.004
SN  - 1871-1014
SN  - 1878-0350
VL  - 42
SP  - 117
EP  - 129
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cohen, Andrew
A1  - Campisano, C.
A1  - Arrowsmith, J. Ramón
A1  - Asrat, Asfawossen
A1  - Behrensmeyer, A. K.
A1  - Deino, A.
A1  - Feibel, C.
A1  - Hill, A.
A1  - Johnson, R.
A1  - Kingston, J.
A1  - Lamb, Henry F.
A1  - Lowenstein, T.
A1  - Noren, A.
A1  - Olago, D.
A1  - Owen, R. B.
A1  - Potts, R.
A1  - Reed, Kate
A1  - Renaut, R.
A1  - Schäbitz, Frank
A1  - Tiercelin, J. -J.
A1  - Trauth, Martin H.
A1  - Wynn, J.
A1  - Ivory, S.
A1  - Brady, K.
A1  - Rodysill, J.
A1  - Githiri, J.
A1  - Russell, J.
A1  - Förster, Verena
A1  - Dommain, René
A1  - Rucina, S.
A1  - Deocampo, D.
A1  - Russell, J.
A1  - Billingsley, A.
A1  - Beck, C.
A1  - Dorenbeck, G.
A1  - Dullo, L.
A1  - Feary, D.
A1  - Garello, D.
A1  - Gromig, R.
A1  - Johnson, T.
A1  - Junginger, A.
A1  - Karanja, M.
A1  - Kimburi, E.
A1  - Mbuthia, A.
A1  - McCartney, T.
A1  - McNulty, E.
A1  - Muiruri, V.
A1  - Nambiro, E.
A1  - Negash, E. W.
A1  - Njagi, D.
A1  - Wilson, J. N.
A1  - Rabideaux, N.
A1  - Raub, T.
A1  - Sier, M. J.
A1  - Smith, P.
A1  - Urban, J.
A1  - Warren, M.
A1  - Yadeta, M.
A1  - Yost, C.
A1  - Zinaye, B.
T1  - The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project: inferring the environmental context of human evolution from eastern African rift lake deposits
JF  - Scientific Drilling
N2  - 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.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5194/sd-21-1-2016
SN  - 1816-8957
SN  - 1816-3459
VL  - 21
SP  - 1
EP  - 16
PB  - Copernicus
CY  - Göttingen
ER  -