Recent hypotheses have emphasized the roles of environmental and climatic variations as driving forces in hominid evolution. Accurate and precise reconstructions of hominid paleoenvironments are necessary to test such hypotheses. This project intends to reconstruct the paleoecology of the Pleistocene upper Busidima Formation of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project study area (Afar Depression, Ethiopia), at the locality scale necessary to address hypotheses of microhabitat heterogeneity. In doing so, this study will result in data on previously undescribed faunal material and create an ecological framework for the interpretation of hominid biological and technological evolution in the upper Busidima and Afar region more generally. The paleoecology of the upper Busidima Fm. will be characterized for 40 individual localities across three temporal packages, based on the following indicators: (1) taxonomic identification and description of >700 unpublished vertebrate fossils, (2) reconstruction of bovid paleodiets based on mesowear analysis and stable isotope analysis of tooth enamel, and (3) paleovegetation reconstruction via biomarker analysis of fossil biomarkers and stable isotope analysis of pedogenic carbonates. These data will be combined using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to analyze spatial and temporal patterns in paleoecology, and assess concordance among multiple paleoenvironmental indicators. This approach will provide paleoecological data for a poorly sampled time period, examine methodological issues in paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and situate the upper Busidima Fm. in the larger ecological context of Pleistocene East Africa. The outcome of this project will be relevant to a broad range of paleoanthropological studies by making new faunal material available for comparisons. Comparisons of multiple environmental indicators will significantly advance paleoenvironmental research. In addition, this study highlights the utility of GIS in documenting, analyzing, and visualizing paleoecological data. Finally, the researched proposed here represents an important step in building international research partnerships between African (Ethiopian) and U.S. researchers, and will help develop infrastructure among scientific institutions in the U.S. (Anthropology and Geological Sciences Departments at Indiana University, and Geology Department at the University of Arizona) and Ethiopia (National Museum of Ethiopia). As the co-PI (Everett) is an underrepresented minority (female Hispanic), this study will be a critical opportunity to increase representation of this group in advanced scientific research and provide a platform for development of her research career. The results of this important research will be disseminated to the broader public, published widely and integrated into teaching curricula in a number of courses. The results of this research will be relevant to the general public in helping us understand human adaptation and response to long-term environmental change, and the potential impact of environmental change on human populations.
