Abrupt climate change and its influences on hominin evolution during the early Pleistocene in the Turkana Basin, Kenya

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

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Article

Lupien, Rachel L.^1,2  Russell, James M.¹  Grove, Matt³  Beck, Catherine C.⁴  Feibel, Craig S.⁵  Cohen, Andrew S.⁶ 

[1] Brown Univ, Dept Earth Environm & Planetary Sci, 324 Brook St, Providence, RI 02906 USA

[2] Lamont Doherty Earth Observ, Div Biol & Paleo Environm, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 USA

[3] Univ Liverpool, Archaeol Class & Egyptol, 8-14 Abercromby Sq, Liverpool L69 7WZ, Merseyside, England

[4] Hamilton Coll, Dept Geosci, 198 Coll Hill Rd, Clinton, NY 13323 USA

[5] Rutgers State Univ, Dept Earth & Planetary Sci, 610 Taylor Rd, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA

[6] Univ Arizona, Dept Geosci, 1040 East 4th St, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA

关键词: Human evolution;    Paleoclimatology;    Pleistocene;    East Africa;    Organic geochemistry;    Biomarkers;    Stable isotopes;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106531

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Rapid climate variability has been hypothesized to play an important role in hominin evolution, yet our knowledge of Plio-Pleistocene climate change on short timescales is poor. Here, we developed centennial-scale reconstructions of precipitation from leaf wax biomarker hydrogen isotope ratios (delta D-wax) using lacustrine sediment from West Turkana, Kenya. We analyzed two time intervals (similar to 1.72 and similar to 1.60 Ma) with different orbital configurations (0.043 and 0.025 eccentricity, respectively) to examine the influence of seasonal insolation forcing on high-frequency climate variability and the rates of climate transitions. Our data indicate that under low summer insolation, which should induce high latitude glaciation and tropical African aridity, millennial-scale climate variability was stronger. This suggests that hominins may have been forced to contend with increased climate variability during already extreme environmental conditions. Additionally, we observe a rapid shift from arid to humid conditions occurring in less than 200 years under high-amplitude precessional-scale insolation change. The rate of this transition is similar to that observed in some proxy records of the onset of the African Humid Period, indicating high sensitivity to gradual insolation forcing in the Turkana Basin. Such abrupt climate changes could induce evolutionary selection for generalist behavioral traits in hominins. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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