With support from a National Science Foundation award for High Risk Research in Anthropology, Dr. John Kappelman from the University of Texas Austin will carry out paleoanthropological fieldwork in the Denizli region of western Turkey. In 2002, fieldwork in these Plio-Pleistocene deposits produced fossil hominin cranial remains, which suggests additional fossil material may be recoverable. This region represents a geographical crossroads of the Old World and has - to date - been understudied, with relatively much more paleoanthropological fieldwork in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Given Turkey's geographic position, it is likely that various hominin species lived in and migrated across this region.
The PI and colleague plans to attempt to recover additional fossil hominins, identify archaeological sites, and study the sedimentological, geochronological, and paleoecological context of the fossils. They will conduct a detailed survey of the travertine quarry where the fossil hominin was discovered, expand the survey into the extensive fluvial and lacustrine sediments that are lateral to and stratigraphically below and above the fossil quarry, study and describe the fauna and sediments along with any stone tools that are recovered, begin a program of radioisotopic and paleomagnetic dating in order to determine the ages of the sediments and fossils, and reconstruct the depositional history and paleoecology.
This project promises to greatly expand our understanding of ancient hominins in this critical region of the world and provide new data that can be used to test existing models of fossil hominin dispersal and evolution.
The early record of human evolution is one represented by numerous sites from Europe, Africa, and Asia, but one region that to date has largely remained a blank spot on the map is Turkey. Turkey is situated at the geographical crossroads of the Old World and, as attested to by its numerous archaeological sites, witnessed the presence and likely migrations of various hominin species in and across this region over the past nearly two million years. We carried out paleontological survey work in southwestern Turkey in order to locate fossil-bearing sediments of Plio-Pleistocene age near Denizli that in 2002 produced the first fossil hominin known from the country that we attribute to Homo erectus. We concentrated our efforts in the Denizli region of the easternmost extent of the Büyük Menderes graben and recovered additional bovid, cervid, proboscidean, and equid fossils that are Middle Pleistocene in age. We are undertaking a program of radioisotopic dating of the travertine rocks that are very common in the region in order to more precisely determine the ages of the sediments in which these fossils are found. Our work documents the presence of Homo erectus in western Asia during what appears to be a warm interglacial period and promises to expand our understanding of ancient hominins in this critical region of the world. These new data can be used to test and evaluate models of fossil hominin adaptation, dispersal, and evolution.
