Fossils from the Pliocene Mille-Logya Site in the Afar Region of Ethiopia suggest that the origin of the genus Homo was associated with environmental change.
[sciencythoughts.blogspot.com]
For many decades, a disparity between the resolution of long and continuous marine paleoclimate records versus fragmentary and time-averaged terrestrial records has hampered our ability to establish precise links between human evolution and major environmental changes. However, a recent proliferation of fieldwork, new drilling campaigns targeting highly detailed and relatively continuous paleolake records, and novel geochemical approaches are helping to assess terrestrial environmental dynamics at finer resolutions. Despite this progress, it remains the case that fauna, particularly hominins, are poorly sampled from the crucial time range between 3 and 2.5 million years ago because fossiliferous sediments dating to this interval are rare. Although prolific deposits of the Omo-Turkana Basin in Ethiopia and Kenya do contain sediments from this interval, the Hominin fossils are fragmentary and their taxonomic identities are uncertain. Sedimentary basins of the Afar in Ethiopia are highly fossiliferous, containing the most complete Hominin record of the past 6 million years, alongside diverse faunas and well-established chronologies, but the 3–2.5 million years ago interval is very poorly represented.**
I was aware of this for quite awhile. Climatic changes and severe drought had forced early hominids to a small band of land along the coast. A movement to exploiting the sea has been seen in the tool assemblage from sites dating to this period. The drought and coastal band acted to funnel early hominids northward toward the Middle East (human Bernoulli Principle in human migration).
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Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
Posted by TriphidIndigenous Australian Aboriginal Rock art dated somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand years old.
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