标题：The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project: High-Resolution Paleoclimate Records from the East African Rift System and Their Implications for Understanding the Environmental Context of Hominin Evolution
摘要：The possibility of a causal relationship between Earth history processes and hominin evolution in Africa hasbeen the subject of intensive paleoanthropological research for the last 25 years. One fundamental question is:can any geohistorical processes, in particular, climatic ones, be characterized with sufficient precision to enabletemporal correlation with events in hominin evolution and provide support for a possible causal mechanism forevolutionary changes? Previous attempts to link paleoclimate and hominin evolution have centered on evidencefrom the outcrops where the hominin fossils are found, as understanding whether and how hominin populationsresponded to habitat change must be examined at the local basinal scale. However, these outcrop records typicallyprovide incomplete, low-resolution climate and environmental histories, and surface weathering often precludesthe application of highly sensitive, state-of-the-art paleoenvironmental methods. Continuous and well-preserveddeep-sea drill core records have provided an alternative approach to reconstructing the context of hominin evolution,but have been collected at great distances from hominin sites and typically integrate information over vastspatial scales. The goal of the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) is to analyze climate andother Earth system dynamics using detailed paleoenvironmental data acquired through scientific drilling of lacustrinedepocenters at or near six key paleoanthropological sites in Kenya and Ethiopia. This review provides anoverview of a unique collaboration of paleoanthropologists and earth scientists who have joined together to explicitlyexplore key hypotheses linking environmental history and mammalian (including hominin) evolution andpotentially develop new testable hypotheses. With a focus on continuous, high-resolution proxies at timescalesrelevant to both biological and cultural evolution, the HSPDP aims to dramatically expand our understanding ofthe environmental history of eastern Africa during a significant portion of the Late Neogene and Quaternary, andto generate useful models of long-term environmental dynamics in the region.
