International Research Fellowship Program: East African Paleoclimate from Ancient Lake Clays: Linking Ecosystem Change with Hominid Evolution

Deocampo Daniel M, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

0202612 Deocampo The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a thirteen-month research fellowship by Dr. Daniel M. Deocampo to work with Dr. William Dubbin at the Natural History Museum in London, United Kingdom. This project will test current hypotheses linking climate change, paleoecology, and hominid evolution by reconstructing regional paleoclimate in East Africa during selected intervals over the past 2 million years. This will be accomplished by laboratory analysis of ultrafine paleolake clays from the Olorgesailie (Kenya) and Olduvai (Tanzania) basins to provide evidence of ancient environmental conditions, and laboratory analysis of water-mineral interactions under experimental and modern environmental conditions to guide the interpretation of ancient clays. The hydrologically-closed basins on East Africa are sensitive to climate change and may provide relevant sedimentary records of environmental change. From this work, will come a partial chronology of Olorgesailie and Olduvai paleolake salinity/alkalinity fluctuations before and after the cyclicity shift 900,000 years ago. Good correlation with marine records would be among the first African land-sea paleoclimate correlations and poor correlation would prompt further exploration of the role of orbital cyclicity in African environmental change. This application of clay mineralogy and geochemistry will play an important role in understanding East African ecosystems and early hominids. The research team led by Dr. Dubbin is uniquely suited to collaborate on this project, with expertise in studying mineral transformations, biological effects on mineral processes, clays, and experimental approaches.