Abstract
The Middle Awash study area of Ethiopia's Afar rift has yielded abundant vertebrate fossils (≈ 10,000), including several hominid taxa1,2,3,4. The study area contains a long sedimentary record spanning Late Miocene (5.3–11.2 Myr ago) to Holocene times. Exposed in a unique tectonic and volcanic transition zone between the main Ethiopian rift (MER) and the Afar rift, sediments along the western Afar rift margin in the Middle Awash provide a unique window on the Late Miocene of Ethiopia. These deposits have now yielded the earliest hominids, described in an accompanying paper5 and dated here to between 5.54 and 5.77 Myr. These geological and palaeobiological data from the Middle Awash provide fresh perspectives on hominid origins and early evolution. Here we show that these earliest hominids derive from relatively wet and wooded environments that were modulated by tectonic, volcanic, climatic and geomorphic processes. A similar wooded habitat also has been suggested for the 6.0 Myr hominoid fossils recently recovered from Lukeino, Kenya6. These findings require fundamental reassessment of models that invoke a significant role for global climatic change and/or savannah habitat in the origin of hominids.
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Acknowledgements
The Middle Awash Project is multinational, interdisciplinary research co-directed by B.A., Y. Beyene, J. D. Clark, T. D.W. and G.W.G. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the University of California at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Additional contributions were made by the Graduate School, the Office for Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching and the Geology Department at Miami University, and the Research Board of the University of Illinois. We thank H. Gilbert for field and illustrations work; H. Saegusa for proboscidean identifications; D. DeGusta for primate identifications; F. C. Howell for carnivore identifications; H. Wesselman and M. Asnake for micromammal analysis and identifications; E. Vrba for bovid identifications; and L. Smeenk for palaeomagnetic analyses. We thank the Ministry of Information and Culture, the Authority for Research and Conservation of the Cultural Heritage, and the National Museum of Ethiopia for permission to conduct the research. We appreciate the support of the Afar regional government and the Afar people of the Middle Awash. Access to the Electron Microprobe Laboratory and additional support from the Earth Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and help from P. Snow is greatly appreciated. S. Baldridge internally reviewed the manuscript at Los Alamos.
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WoldeGabriel, G., Haile-Selassie, Y., Renne, P. et al. Geology and palaeontology of the Late Miocene Middle Awash valley, Afar rift, Ethiopia. Nature 412, 175–178 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35084058
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35084058
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