International Research Fellowship Program: Biogeography and Evolutionary Turnover in the Context of Human Evolution

Bibi Faysal, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

0852975 Bibi This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine 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 twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Faysal Bibi to work with Dr. Jean-Renaud Boisserie at the University of Poitiers in France. This project will consist of: 1) conducting fieldwork to discover new fossils; and 2) exploring the biotic similarities and differences between paleontological sites of relevance to the history of human evolution. Work is focusing on fossil sites from two spans of time; the late Miocene sites of the Baynunah Formation (United Arab Emirates) and the late Pliocene sites in the Middle Awash (north eastern Ethiopia), and the Omo Shungura Formation (southern Ethiopia). The Baynunah is being investigated at the faunal level by way of annual fieldwork activities, and is being compared with the biogeographic context at contemporaneous East African and Asian fossil sites. Comparison between sites aged 3?2.5Ma in East Africa focuses on the description of newly discovered specimens of Bovidae (antelopes) from the Omo Shungura and the Middle Awash. The comparative biogeographic context between these two fossil areas is developing current hypotheses on the major climatic changes and resulting biotic responses that are known to have taken place in the late Pliocene of Africa. This research: 1) addresses the types of biogeographic barriers that produced faunal differences between different portions of Africa and Arabia; and 2) tests whether turnover took place in the Afar as it did in the Omo at 2.8?2.5Ma, further investigating the effective presence of biogeographic barriers that differentiated the Omo and Afar late Pliocene faunas (including hominids). In addition to revealing further chapters of life history in Africa and Arabia, this project is providing new and finely-resolved information on the interactions between environmental change and evolution. This is achieved by close comparison of the fossil record with local, regional, and continental-scale climatic records. The significance of these fossil faunas is underscored by the fact that the late Miocene and the late Pliocene are two important periods in the history of human evolution. The human line split from that of the chimpanzee in the late Miocene, while the late Pliocene saw the development of both Homo and Paranthropus (?robust? hominids) from Australopithecus. By understanding the factors that affected evolutionary change in these fossil assemblages, we are working to understand the historical variables that in turn shaped our own evolution.