DOCSLIB.ORG

Chronostratigraphy of the Miocene–Pliocene Sagantole Formation, Middle Awash Valley, Afar Rift, Ethiopia

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Chronostratigraphy of the Miocene–Pliocene Sagantole Formation, Middle Awash Valley, Afar Rift, Ethiopia Chronostratigraphy of the Miocene–Pliocene Sagantole Formation, Middle Awash Valley, Afar rift, Ethiopia Paul R. Renne* Berkeley Geochronology Center, 2455 Ridge Road, Berkeley, California 94709 and Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 Giday WoldeGabriel Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 William K. Hart Department of Geology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056 Grant Heiken Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 Tim D. White Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 ABSTRACT 1999). The sediment deposited in these basins is largely volcaniclastic in ori- gin and is interbedded with mafic lava and compositionally bimodal tephra The Sagantole Formation comprises more than 200 m of lacustrine, that are products of intermittent volcanism related to the Afar plume. The alluvial, and volcaniclastic sediments, plus compositionally bimodal Afar and the Main Ethiopian rift, covering an area of ~3.5 × 105 km2,began tephras and basaltic lavas, exposed in a domelike horst named the to form at least by 25 Ma (Moore and Davidson, 1978; Berhe et al., 1987; Central Awash Complex in the southwestern Afar rift of Ethiopia. The WoldeGabriel et al., 1990, 1991, 1992; Ebinger et al., 1993; Yemane et al., Sagantole Formation is widely known for abundant vertebrate faunas, 1999), and thick accumulations of sediment, lava, and tephra have been sub- including the 4.4 Ma primitive hominid Ardipithecus ramidus. New sequently deposited into the subsiding rift basins. In the Middle Awash re- lithostratigraphic data are used to subdivide the Sagantole Formation gion of the southern Afar rift, faulting, uplift, differential subsidence, and ero- into the Kuseralee, Gawto, Haradaso, Aramis, Beidareem, Adgantole, sion have produced windows into one such rift-basin succession. and Belohdelie Members, in ascending order. The members are de- The domelike structure of the Central Awash Complex (Kalb et al., 1982) fined on the basis of lithologic differences and laterally continuous comprises rift-bound Neogene basaltic and silicic lava and tephra as well as bounding tephras. volcaniclastic fluvial and lacustrine deposits. This structure rises just west of 40Ar/39Ar dating of 12 intercalated volcanic units firmly establishes the modern Awash River, some 20 km east of the western escarpment bound- the age of the Sagantole Formation to be 5.6 to 3.9 Ma, significantly ing the southern Afar rift. The sedimentary strata have produced an extensive older than previous proposals based on erroneous correlations. Mag- vertebrate fauna, including fossil remains of the earliest known Pliocene ho- netostratigraphic data reveal eight paleomagnetic polarity zones, minid Ardipithecus ramidus (White et al., 1994, 1995; WoldeGabriel et al., which can be correlated unambiguously with the Thvera, Sidufjall, 1994, 1995). Nunivak, and Cochiti Subchrons of the Gilbert Chron. Thus, by refer- The north-northeast–trending rift axis of the Main Ethiopian rift projects ence to the geomagnetic polarity time scale, seven additional chrono- east of the modern Awash River and is at a higher elevation compared with logical datums can be placed in the Sagantole Formation. With a total the western side of the rift floor where the Central Awash Complex is lo- of 19 such datums, the age resolution anywhere in the Sagantole cated. The region surrounding the Central Awash Complex is dominated by Formation is better than ±100 k.y., making this the best-dated the flat terrain of the rift floor except for low, gravel-capped mesas, hog- Miocene–Pliocene succession in Africa. backs, and fault-controlled, undulating hills. The Central Awash Complex structural dome, which rises about 200 m above the surrounding rift floor, is INTRODUCTION radially dissected by drainages that are generally controlled by rift-parallel and transverse normal faults (Fig. 1). Strata are exposed in all these The Ethiopian rift system comprises the Afar Depression in the northeast, drainages, but the overall succession is best revealed in the Amba, Urugus, the centrally placed Main Ethiopian rift, and the 300-km-wide rifted zone lo- Sagantole, and Aramis catchments (Fig. 1). The volcaniclastic sediments of cated in the southwest of the country. The system is characterized by large, the Central Awash Complex are differentially armored from erosion by rapidly subsiding depocenters, some of which are well known for important basaltic lavas and by strongly cemented sandstone and conglomerate beds. paleontological and archaeological resources, including much of the fossil Previously published information (Haileab and Brown, 1992; Kalb, 1993, record of the Pliocene-Pleistocene hominids (e.g., WoldeGabriel et al., 1995) on the chronostratigraphic framework for the Central Awash Complex relied on lithologic similarity, coarse biochronology, and broad structural in- *E-mail: [email protected]. ference without radioisotopic, geochemical, or magnetostratigraphic data. As Data Repository item 9951 contains additional material related to this article. GSA Bulletin; June 1999; v. 111; no. 6; p. 869–885; 9 figures; 1 table. 869 Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-pdf/111/6/869/3383204/i0016-7606-111-6-869.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 Figure 1. Location map based on composite aerial photography showing measured sections, sample localities (numbered), streams, and Afar villages. Locations of magnetostratigraphic sections shown by white lines between Gawto and Adgantole drainages. 870 Geological Society of America Bulletin, June 1999 Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-pdf/111/6/869/3383204/i0016-7606-111-6-869.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 SAGANTOLE FORMATION, MIDDLE AWASH VALLEY,AFAR RIFT, ETHIOPIA Figure 2. Lithostratigraphy of the Sagantole Formation showing stratigraphic levels of the six members defined herein. Locations of named and unnamed tephras are indicated by arrows. Stratigraphy is based on measured sections shown in Figure 1. a result, previous age estimates and correlations have proven inaccurate. Fur- the ages of recent and anticipated future paleontological discoveries as well thermore, the stratigraphic nomenclature used previously has proven difficult as long-range tephra correlations. To this end, this paper presents new to apply and in some instances misleading. We have focused, therefore, on 40Ar/39Ar, paleomagnetic, and stratigraphic data. The new data substantiate the abundant, laterally extensive tephra of the Central Awash Complex to the antiquity of the volcanic and sedimentary units of the Central Awash construct a chronostratigraphic framework. Chemical analyses of these Complex and firmly place Ardipithecus ramidus at 4.4 Ma. A further goal of tephras, from hundreds of samples collected throughout the Central Awash this paper is to compare the ages of geomagnetic polarity transitions derived Complex since 1992, are ongoing. from 40Ar/39Ar dating with ages predicted by various polarity-reversal time Where possible we have adopted earlier stratigraphic nomenclature. For scales. Our results are consistent with the time scale based on Milankovitch tephra significant to geochronologic or correlation purposes, we have fol- cycles (e.g., Hilgen, 1991; Lourens et al., 1996). lowed prior convention in assigning them Afar names for animals, e.g., the Daam Aatu Basaltic Tuff (WoldeGabriel et al., 1994, 1995). LITHOSTRATIGRAPHY OF THE SAGANTOLE FORMATION Although research in the Middle Awash paleoanthropological study area is ongoing, a basic chronostratigraphic framework can now be established The various Neogene and Quaternary deposits of the Middle Awash region for the Central Awash Complex. Such a framework is useful for constraining and environs were grouped broadly into the Awash Group and subdivided into Geological Society of America Bulletin, June 1999 871 Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-pdf/111/6/869/3383204/i0016-7606-111-6-869.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 RENNE ET AL. different formations and members on the basis of biochronology (Kalb, lava flows, stratigraphically below the Haradaso Member of the Sagantole 1993). The Sagantole Formation contains an extensive record of pyroclastic Formation. The Kuseralee Member is therefore defined herein as the lowest volcanism, primarily represented by distal tephra layers, interbedded with la- member of the Sagantole Formation and removed from the currently more custrine, lake-margin, flood-plain, and fluvial sediment. Kalb et al. (1982) in- poorly defined Adu-Asa Formation of the western rift margin. formally subdivided the Sagantole Formation into the Haradaso and Aramis Over 20 m of dark olive-gray gypsiferous siltstone and claystone and in- members and the “Beearyada” and “Kalaloo” beds. Following five seasons of terbedded bentonite layers and light gray sandstones are exposed in the field work (1992–1996), we have subdivided the formation into more pre- southwestern Central Awash Complex between Kuseralee and Amba, cisely defined members that are temporally discrete, laterally continuous, where they underlie the basalt flows of the Gawto Member. The base of the lithostratigraphically distinct, and readily recognizable in the field. The Kuseralee Member is obscured by sand in the modern Amba drainage. A Sagantole Formation comprises
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Pliocene Hominin Diversity Conundrum: Do More Fossils
    SPECIAL FEATURE: PERSPECTIVE The Pliocene hominin diversity conundrum: Do more fossils mean less clarity? SPECIAL FEATURE: PERSPECTIVE Yohannes Haile-Selassiea,b,1, Stephanie M. Melilloc, and Denise F. Sud Edited by Richard G. Klein, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved January 7, 2016 (received for review November 6, 2015) Recent discoveries of multiple middle Pliocene hominins have raised the possibility that early hominins were as speciose as later hominins. However, debates continue to arise around the validity of most of these new taxa, largely based on poor preservation of holotype specimens, small sample size, or the lack of evidence for ecological diversity. A closer look at the currently available fossil evidence from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Chad indicate that Australopithecus afarensis was not the only hominin species during the middle Pliocene, and that there were other species clearly distinguishable from it by their locomotor adaptation and diet. Although there is no doubt that the presence of multiple species during the middle Pliocene opens new windows into our evolutionary past, it also complicates our understanding of early hominin taxonomy and phylogenetic relationships. hominin diversity | Australopithecus | Kenyanthropus | Pliocene | ecological diversity If one looks back over the controversies of human When Australopithecus bahrelghazali was named evolution, they have one element in common: new in 1995 based on an approximately 3.5-Ma partial discoveries, theories, methods came along which “ ” mandible from Chad (12), it was quickly dismissed as no one in the controversy anticipated. The facts – changed, and consequently people were not right a geographic variant of Au. afarensis (13 15). The or wrong in any simple way.
    [Show full text]
  • Ardipithecus Kadabba the Middle Awash Series Series Editor Tim White, University of California, Berkeley
    Ardipithecus kadabba The Middle Awash Series Series Editor Tim White, University of California, Berkeley University of California Press Editor Charles R. Crumly Homo erectus: Pleistocene Evidence from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, edited by W. Henry Gilbert and Berhane Asfaw Ardipithecus kadabba: Late Miocene Evidence from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, edited by Yohannes Haile-Selassie and Giday WoldeGabriel Ardipithecus kadahba Late Miocene Evidence from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia EDITED BY YOHANNES HAILE-SELASS1E AND GIDAY WOLDEGABRIEL UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS 'ey Los Angeles University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. The Middle Awash Series, Volume 2 University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2009 by "The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ardipithecus kadabba : late miocene evidence from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia / edited by Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Giday WoldeGabriel. p. cm. — (The Middle Awash series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-25440-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Ardipithecus kadabba—Ethiopia—Middle Awash. 2. Fossil hominids—Ethiopia—Middle Awash. 3. Human remains (Archaeology)—Ethiopia—Middle Awash. 4. Paleoanthropology— Ethiopia—Middle Awash. 5. Middle Awash (Ethiopia)—Antiquities. I. Haile-Selassie, Yohannes, 1961- II. WoldeGabriel, Giday. GN282.73.A73 2008 569.90963— 2008004004 Manufactured in the United States 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 987654321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
    [Show full text]
  • Late Miocene Hominids from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia
    letters to nature composition of pedogenic carbonate along elevation transects in the southern Great Basin, United seem to represent a single taxon, a new subspecies of Ardipithecus States. Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 101, 464±475 (1989). (see Methods). 25. Kingdon, J. East African Mammals Vol. IIB (Academic, New York, 1974). 26. Leakey, M. G. et al. Lothagam: a record of faunal change in the Late Miocene of East Africa. J. Vert. The ®rst specimen recovered was the subspeci®c holotype, ALA- Paleontol. 16, 556±570 (1996). VP-2/10, a right mandible with M3. (Note that subscripts indicate Supplementary information is available on Nature's World-Wide Web site lower teeth, superscripts upper teeth.) Four isolated left lower teeth (http://www.nature.com) or as paper copy from the London editorial of®ce of Nature. (I2,LC,P4 and M2) are associated by spatial proximity, colour, perimortem root fracture and wear. The left I2 is metrically and Acknowledgements morphologically comparable to known later hominid incisors and The Middle Awash Project is multinational, interdisciplinary research co-directed by B.A., distinctively narrower than the lateral incisors of chimpanzees (Pan Y. Beyene, J. D. Clark, T. D.W. and G.W.G. The research was supported by the National troglodytes). The P4 has a well developed talonid and a Tome's root Science Foundation and the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the rather than the single roots reported for Aramis A. ramidus11. University of California at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Additional contributions The associated lower canine is worn apically and distally.
    [Show full text]
  • From Ardipithecus Ramidus to Homo Sapiens
    36 Duke of Edinburgh Prize to: Gen Suwa Professor and Director, The University Museum, The University of Tokyo for “Human Origins and Evolution: from Ardipithecus ramidus to Homo sapiens” Outline of the work: Prof. Gen Suwa is a biological anthropologist and paleoanthropologist who has considerably contributed to the understanding of human evolution through the discovery and analysis of fossil human remains and associated contextual evidence. His most notable contribution is the elucidation of the earliest stages of human ancestry via the discovery and analysis of the 4.4 million-year (Ma)-old Ardipithecus ramidus and the nearly 6-Ma-old but more fragmentary Ardipithecus kadabba fossils. Other major works include the discovery and naming of the 8-Ma-old African great ape Chororapithecus abyssinicus, the establishment of the timing of the split between the Homo and the robust Australopithecus lineages, the dating of the earliest Acheulean stone tools to 1.75 Ma, and various studies on more recent Pleistocene and Holocene fossil and skeletal materials. Between the 1980s and 1990s, Prof. Suwa has led the comparative analysis of Australopithecus and early Homo, particularly regarding dental fossil records spanning a period between 4 and 1 Ma. Importantly, his work is internationally recognized as the standard for the period between 3 and 2 Ma, which is crucial for the understanding of the emergence of the genus Homo and its subsequent evolutionary trajectories. Suwa’s work on the dentition contributed significantly to the elucidation of the evolution of the earliest Australopithecus species from the more primitive Ardipithecus ramidus by 4.2 Ma, which then largely evolved as a lineage with considerable populational variation and finally split into two clades just after 3 Ma.
    [Show full text]
  • Variability in the Middle Stone Age of Eastern Africa Author(S): Christian A
    Variability in the Middle Stone Age of Eastern Africa Author(s): Christian A. Tryon and J. Tyler Faith Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 54, No. S8, Alternative Pathways to Complexity: Evolutionary Trajectories in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age (December 2013), pp. S234-S254 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/673752 . Accessed: 11/10/2015 19:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 23.235.32.0 on Sun, 11 Oct 2015 19:00:22 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions S234 Current Anthropology Volume 54, Supplement 8, December 2013 Variability in the Middle Stone Age of Eastern Africa by Christian A. Tryon and J. Tyler Faith CAϩ Online-Only Material: Supplement A Eastern Africa is an important area to study early populations of Homo sapiens because subsets of those populations likely dispersed to Eurasia and subsequently throughout the globe during the Upper Pleistocene.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origin of Humans: the Record from the Afar of Ethiopia
    What is our Real Knowledge about the Human Being Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Scripta Varia 109, Vatican City 2007 www.pas.va/content/dam/accademia/pdf/sv109/sv109-asfaw.pdf THE ORIGIN OF HUMANS: THE RECORD FROM THE AFAR OF ETHIOPIA BERHANE ASFAW I would like to start with just one simple statement. Our own species is anatomically and behaviourally very recent, and cannot be understood or appreciated without taking into account where it came from and the form it evolved from. That is the reason why we need to understand our biolog- ical history. I just want to review the road we had to pass through in our 6 million year biological history. Just to reiterate, evolution is a fact. The rea- son why we say that we are evolved is because of evidence from compara- tive anatomy, molecular biology and fossil evidence. My work is mostly on the fossil evidence. Just to give you a summary, we can classify our six million year biologi- cal history into three chapters (Fig. 1, see page 163). The first chapter, start- ing from the bottom, from the third one, is the chapter of Ardipithecus. That is a very remote group of ancestors that lived from about 6 million years ago to about 4.4 million years ago, according to our knowledge in the fossil record. The second chapter, the Australopithecus era, is the second phase of our biological history. It emerged, from the fossil record as we know it, around 4.1 million years ago and then continued later, the specialised forms continued up to around 1.3 million years ago, overlapping with the third chapter of our history.
    [Show full text]
  • The Middle Stone Age of the Northern Kenyan Rift: Age and Context of New Archaeological Sites from the Kapedo Tuffs
    Journal of Human Evolution 55 (2008) 652–664 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Human Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol The Middle Stone Age of the northern Kenyan Rift: age and context of new archaeological sites from the Kapedo Tuffs Christian A. Tryon a,*, Neil T. Roach b, M. Amelia V. Logan c a Human Origins Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, PO Box 37012, MRC 112, Washington DC, 20013-7012, USA b Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 02138, USA c Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, PO Box 37012, MRC 119, Washington DC, 20013-7012, USA article info abstract Article history: Rift Valley sites in southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya preserve the oldest fossil remains attributed to Received 22 June 2007 Homo sapiens and the earliest archaeological sites attributed to the Middle Stone Age (MSA). New Accepted 14 March 2008 localities from the Kapedo Tuffs augment the sparse sample of MSA sites from the northern Kenya Rift. Tephrostratigraphic correlation with dated pyroclastic deposits from the adjacent volcano Silali suggests an age range of 135–123 ka for archaeological sites of the Kapedo Tuffs. Comparisons of the Kapedo Tuffs Keywords: archaeological assemblages with those from the adjacent Turkana and Baringo basins show broad lithic Tephrostratigraphy technological similarity but reveal that stone raw material availability is a key factor in explaining Silali Lithic technology typologically defined archaeological variability within this region. Spatially and temporally resolved Regional variation comparisons such as this provide the best means to link the biological and behavioral variation manifest Middle-Late Pleistocene in the record of early Homo sapiens.
    [Show full text]
  • THE WATER of the AWASH RIVER BASIN a FUTURE CHALLENGE to ETHIOPIA Fig.1 the Main River Basins in Ethiopia
    THE WATER OF THE AWASH RIVER BASIN A FUTURE CHALLENGE TO ETHIOPIA Fig.1 The main river basins in Ethiopia. Girma Taddese1 , Kai Sonder2 & 3 Don Peden [email protected],/[email protected] , It is a dilemma why Ethiopia is starving while it has huge amount of surface water and perennial rivers. 2 [email protected] & [email protected] It appeared that in the past Ethiopia was only utilizing the Awash River Basin for irrigation development, it accounts for 48% of the national irrigation schemes (FAO, 1995). Thus it is timely to assess the complex situation of the Awash River Basin. ILRI P.O.Box 5689 Addis Ababa Ethiopia Summary The Awash River Basin faces land degradation, high population density, natural water degradation 12 salinity and wetland degradation. Already desertification has started at lower Awash River Basin. In the high land part deforestation andsedimentation has increased in the past three decades. As more water is 10 drawn from the river there could be drastic climate and ecological changes which endanger the basin 8 habitat and h uman livelihood. Draining the wetlands for irrigation could imbalance the sustainability of the basin. 6 (million) 4 Number affected Introduction 2 Over View 0 1965 1969 1973 1977 1978 1979 1983 1984 1985 1987 1989 1990 1991 1992 2003 Currently Ethiopia’s agriculture depends on rainfall with limited use of water resources for irrigation. Drought years At approximately 50% of the GDP, agriculture, most of it based on rain-fed small -holder systems and livestock, contributes by far the largest part of the economy and is currently growing on average 5% Fig.
    [Show full text]
  • Hominin Fire Use in the Okote Member at Koobi Fora, Kenya: New Evidence for the Old Debate
    Journal of Human Evolution 133 (2019) 214e229 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Human Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol Hominin fire use in the Okote member at Koobi Fora, Kenya: New evidence for the old debate * Sarah Hlubik a, , Russell Cutts b, David R. Braun c, Francesco Berna d, Craig S. Feibel a, John W.K. Harris a, e a Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Anthropology Department, NJ, USA b University of Georgia, Athens, Anthropology Department, GA, USA c The George Washington University, Anthropology Department, Washington, DC, USA d Simon Fraser University, Archaeology Department, Burnaby, Canada e The National Museums of Kenya, Archaeology Department, Nairobi, Kenya article info abstract Article history: Hominin fire use in the early Pleistocene has been debated since the early 1970s when consolidated Received 11 September 2016 reddened sediment patches were identified at FxJj20 East and Main, Koobi Fora, Kenya. Since then, re- Accepted 31 January 2019 searchers have argued for evidence of early Pleistocene fire use at a handful of archaeological sites with evidence of combustion. Some argue that morphological evidence of early Homo erectus fossils indicates a dietary shift to higher quality food sources, which could be achieved by cooking. Others contend that Keywords: fire use does not become a regular behavior until later, in the middle Pleistocene, when archaeological Fire in human evolution sites begin to show regular evidence for fire use. An early date for hominin control of fire would help to Experimental archaeology fi Hominin evolution explain the grade changes seen with the appearance of H.
    [Show full text]
  • Terrestrial Apes and Phylogenetic Trees
    Terrestrial apes and phylogenetic trees Juan Luis Arsuaga1 Centro (Universidad Complutense de Madrid - Instituto de Salud Carlos III) de Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos, 28029 Madrid, Spain; and Departamento de Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain The image that best expresses Darwin’s thinking is the tree of life. primitive than the Neanderthals. It is possible that the authentic However, Darwin’s human evolutionary tree lacked almost every- missing link (or, more appropriately, “fossil link”) for Darwin thing because only the Neanderthals were known at the time and would have been the Taung child, discovered in 1924 and of such a they were considered one extreme expression of our own species. primitive aspect that it took 20 years until it was finally accepted as Darwin believed that the root of the human tree was very deep and our ancestor by the majority of the scientific community. in Africa. It was not until 1962 that the root was shown to be much Darwin believed that the origins of humanity most likely lay in more recent in time and definitively in Africa. On the other hand, Africa, although the discovery of fossil apes in Europe made him some neo-Darwinians believed that our family tree was not a tree, question this. In The Descent of Man (ref. 1: p. 199) he reflects on because there were no branches, but, rather, a straight stem. The the topic: “It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly recent years have witnessed spectacular discoveries in Africa that inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chim- take us close to the origin of the human tree and in Spain at Ata- panzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it puerca that help us better understand the origin of the Neander- is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on thals as well as our own species.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae Yohannes Haile-Selassie Ambaye Education
    Curriculum Vitae Yohannes Haile-Selassie Ambaye Curator/Head: Department of Physical Anthropology Cleveland Museum of Natural History, 1 Wade Oval Drive, Cleveland OH 44106 Education 2001 University of California, Berkeley, PhD (Integrative Biology) 1995 University of California, Berkeley, M.A. (Anthropology) 1982 Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, BA (History) Museum Research and Positions 2002-: Curator/Head, Department of Physical Anthropology, Cleveland Museum of Natural History. 2003-present: Research on Early Pliocene Vertebrate fossils from the Woranso-Mille Paleontological site. 1995-2008: Research on Late Miocene vertebrate fossils, preparation, curation, and analyses of vertebrate fossils from the Middle Awash Valley housed at the Paleoanthropology, Laboratory of the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. 1985-1992: Research Assistant at the Paleoanthropology Laboratory of the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. 1983-1984: Historian, Center for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Academic Positions 2015-: Adjunct Associate Professor, Institute of Paleoenvironment and Heritage Conservation, Mekelle University, Ethiopia 2009-: Adjunct Professor, Departments of Anthropology and Anatomy, Case Western Reserve University. 2002-2008: Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University. 2002-: Adjunct Professor, Department of Anatomy, Case Western Reserve University. 2007-2009: Adjunct Assistant Professor, The Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences, Cleveland State University. 2007-: Adjunct Professor, Department of Cognitive Sciences, Case Western Reserve University. Field Research 2005-: Woranso-Mille paleontological project fieldwork (PI) 2003-4: Paleoanthropological survey of North and Central Afar Rift, Ethiopia. 1989-2007: Fieldwork in the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia. 1 1997-1999: Fieldwork in the Mulu Basin, Afar, Ethiopia. 1997: Konso paleontological research area, Southern Ethiopia.
    [Show full text]
  • Stratigraphic, Chronological and Behavioural Contexts of Pleistocene
    letters to nature shows that modern human morphology emerged in Africa Acknowledgements We thank A. Almquist, A. Asfaw, M. Asnake, T. Assebework, D. Brill, long before the Neanderthals vanished from Eurasia. A J. D. Clark, J. DeHeinzelin, A. Getty, Y. Haile-Selassie, B. Latimer, C. Pehlevan, K. Schick, S. Simpson, P.Snow and Y. Zeleka for fieldwork and analytical studies; J. L. Arsuaga, A. Gracia and N. Garcia for comparative metric data; C. O. Lovejoy for review; and F. Bibi, D. Brill, R. Cann, Methods Y. Haile-Selassie, L. Hlusko, L. Jellema, R. Klein, J. Matternes and R. Paul for assistance. We thank Order Primates L., 1758 the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture, the Authority for Research and Conservation of the Suborder Anthropoidea Mivart, 1864 Cultural Heritage, and the National Museum of Ethiopia for permissions; the Afar Regional Superfamily Hominoidea Gray, 1825 Government and the Afar people of the Middle Awash, particularly the Bouri–Modaitu Family Hominidae Gray, 1825 community and H. Elema; and many other individuals for contributing to our efforts. This Homo sapiens idaltu subsp. nov. research was supported by the NSF (US) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Etymology. The subspecies name ‘ida`ltu’ is taken from the Afar language. It means ‘elder’. Competing interests statement The authors declare that they have no competing financial Holotype. BOU-VP-16/1 (Fig. 1), an adult cranium with partial dentition. Holotype and interests. referred material are housed at the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. Holotype from Bouri Vertebrate Paleontology Locality 16 (BOU-VP 16); differentially corrected Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to T.W.
    [Show full text]