摘要：Investigations of both terrestrial
and marine paleoclimate archives
have resulted in an ongoing debate
concerning global vs. local climate
forcing and associated environmental
changes in East Africa. A
better knowledge of shifts between
dry and humid conditions is key
to our understanding of processes
influencing mammalian and, in
particular, hominin evolution (de-
Menocal, 1995; Trauth et al., 2003,
2005). Because of the unique tectonic
and magmatic evolution
of the East African Rift System
(EARS) and resulting changes in
orography and drainage patterns,
terrestrial paleoclimate records
from these environments may not
always automatically refl ect the environmental
changes inferred from
marine records. For example, the
tectonic and magmatic evolution
of the EARS has resulted in highly
variable sedimentary environments
in close proximity to each other,
whose depositional record may be
fundamentally infl uenced by local
conditions rather than global signals.
