Hominin Environments in the East African Pliocene: An Assessment of the Faunal Evidence

Abstract

This volume grew out of two workshops (Tempe, Ariz., in 2003, and Washington, D.C., in 2004) that brought together scientists who have explored the East African environmental context during the millions of years in which hominins—including our ancestors—evolved. The community of people doing this kind of work is relatively small, in part because it requires long intervals of walking under a tropical Sun looking for outcrops that contain suitable numbers of fossils.Few sites are excavated because the density of fossil remains in undisturbed sedimentary rock is usually too low to make such an effort worthwhile. Nature comes to the fossil hunter's aid by concentrating bones in sites favored by erosion. The most promising of these sites are then explored by surface grid surveys that carefully document the overall context in which the fossils occur, in order to determine the physical (sedimentary), geochemical, and biotic processes that left the deposits. In the end, this meticulous work yields vital clues to critical questions: When and where did our species evolve? And how?