Yohannes Haile-Selassie (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254404
- eISBN:
- 9780520942509
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254404.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
The second volume in a series dedicated to fossil discoveries made in the Afar region of Ethiopia, this work contains description of the geological context and paleoenvironment of the early hominid ...
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The second volume in a series dedicated to fossil discoveries made in the Afar region of Ethiopia, this work contains description of the geological context and paleoenvironment of the early hominid Ardipithecus kadabba. This research, carried out by an international team, describes Middle Awash late Miocene faunal assemblages recovered from sediments firmly dated to between 5.2 and 5.8 million years ago. Compared to other assemblages of similar age, the Middle Awash record is unparalleled in taxonomic diversity, composed of 2,760 specimens representing at least sixty five mammalian genera. This evaluation of the vertebrates from the end of the Miocene in Africa provides detailed morphological and taxonomic descriptions of dozens of taxa, including species new to science. It also incorporates results from analyses of paleoenvironment, paleobiogeography, biochronology, and faunal turnover around the Pliocene-Miocene boundary, opening a new window on the evolution of mammals, African fauna, and its environments.Less
The second volume in a series dedicated to fossil discoveries made in the Afar region of Ethiopia, this work contains description of the geological context and paleoenvironment of the early hominid Ardipithecus kadabba. This research, carried out by an international team, describes Middle Awash late Miocene faunal assemblages recovered from sediments firmly dated to between 5.2 and 5.8 million years ago. Compared to other assemblages of similar age, the Middle Awash record is unparalleled in taxonomic diversity, composed of 2,760 specimens representing at least sixty five mammalian genera. This evaluation of the vertebrates from the end of the Miocene in Africa provides detailed morphological and taxonomic descriptions of dozens of taxa, including species new to science. It also incorporates results from analyses of paleoenvironment, paleobiogeography, biochronology, and faunal turnover around the Pliocene-Miocene boundary, opening a new window on the evolution of mammals, African fauna, and its environments.
W. Henry Gilbert (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520251205
- eISBN:
- 9780520933774
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520251205.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This book, the first in a series devoted to the paleoanthropological resources of the Middle Awash Valley of Ethiopia, studies Homo erectus, a close relative of Homo sapiens. It provides detailed ...
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This book, the first in a series devoted to the paleoanthropological resources of the Middle Awash Valley of Ethiopia, studies Homo erectus, a close relative of Homo sapiens. It provides detailed descriptions, photographs, and analysis of the fossil vertebrates—from elephants and hyenas to humans—from the Daka Member of the Bouri Formation of the Afar, a place renowned for an abundant and lengthy record of human ancestors. These fossils contribute to our understanding of human evolution, and the associated fauna provide new information about the distribution and variability of Pleistocene mammals in eastern Africa. The contributors are all active researchers who worked on the paleontology and geology of these deposits. Here they have combined their disparate efforts into a single volume, making the original research results accessible to both the specialist and the general reader. The volume synthesizes environmental backdrop and anatomical detail to open an unparalleled window on the African Pleistocene and its inhabitants.Less
This book, the first in a series devoted to the paleoanthropological resources of the Middle Awash Valley of Ethiopia, studies Homo erectus, a close relative of Homo sapiens. It provides detailed descriptions, photographs, and analysis of the fossil vertebrates—from elephants and hyenas to humans—from the Daka Member of the Bouri Formation of the Afar, a place renowned for an abundant and lengthy record of human ancestors. These fossils contribute to our understanding of human evolution, and the associated fauna provide new information about the distribution and variability of Pleistocene mammals in eastern Africa. The contributors are all active researchers who worked on the paleontology and geology of these deposits. Here they have combined their disparate efforts into a single volume, making the original research results accessible to both the specialist and the general reader. The volume synthesizes environmental backdrop and anatomical detail to open an unparalleled window on the African Pleistocene and its inhabitants.
Giday Woldegabriel, William K. Hart, Paul R. Renne, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and Tim White
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254404
- eISBN:
- 9780520942509
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254404.003.0002
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
The late Miocene Adu-Asa Formation comprises major sedimentary and volcanic units that crop out along the densely faulted and tilted frontal blocks of the western rift margin of the transition zone ...
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The late Miocene Adu-Asa Formation comprises major sedimentary and volcanic units that crop out along the densely faulted and tilted frontal blocks of the western rift margin of the transition zone between the northern Main Ethiopian Rift (MER) and the southern Afar Rift. This chapter discusses the geological and tectonic processes that led to the origin and evolution of the rift basin of the transition zone. It highlights a decade-long geological and paleontological reconnaissance and focuses investigation along the strike of the frontal fault blocks of the western rift margin of the Middle Awash study area.Less
The late Miocene Adu-Asa Formation comprises major sedimentary and volcanic units that crop out along the densely faulted and tilted frontal blocks of the western rift margin of the transition zone between the northern Main Ethiopian Rift (MER) and the southern Afar Rift. This chapter discusses the geological and tectonic processes that led to the origin and evolution of the rift basin of the transition zone. It highlights a decade-long geological and paleontological reconnaissance and focuses investigation along the strike of the frontal fault blocks of the western rift margin of the Middle Awash study area.
Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Gen Suwa, and Tim White
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254404
- eISBN:
- 9780520942509
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254404.003.0007
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
Recent discoveries of hominid remains older than 5 Ma have afforded new perspectives on the origin of the hominid clade. This chapter describes and assesses the key evidence bearing on these ...
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Recent discoveries of hominid remains older than 5 Ma have afforded new perspectives on the origin of the hominid clade. This chapter describes and assesses the key evidence bearing on these issues—the remains of Ardipithecus kadabba from the Middle Awash study area of the Afar Rift. It introduces the major morphological features of the known Ardipithecus kadabba specimens and also infers possible ancestral ape conditions from the morphologies shared by extant great apes and the collective late and middle Miocene fossil ape record.Less
Recent discoveries of hominid remains older than 5 Ma have afforded new perspectives on the origin of the hominid clade. This chapter describes and assesses the key evidence bearing on these issues—the remains of Ardipithecus kadabba from the Middle Awash study area of the Afar Rift. It introduces the major morphological features of the known Ardipithecus kadabba specimens and also infers possible ancestral ape conditions from the morphologies shared by extant great apes and the collective late and middle Miocene fossil ape record.
Denise F. Su, Stanley H. Ambrose, David Degusta, and Yohannes Haile-Selassie
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254404
- eISBN:
- 9780520942509
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254404.003.0017
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This chapter considers the paleoenvironment of the Middle Awash study area in the Afar Rift of Ethiopia. Different aspects of the large mammalian faunal communities from the Asa Koma and Kuseralee ...
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This chapter considers the paleoenvironment of the Middle Awash study area in the Afar Rift of Ethiopia. Different aspects of the large mammalian faunal communities from the Asa Koma and Kuseralee Members are examined. The chapter examines the community structure based on locomotor and dietary variables, relative abundances of indicator taxa, and ecomorphology. Independent verification of the results based on large mammalian fauna have been derived from fish, bird, and small mammal faunas and from geological and stable isotopic data.Less
This chapter considers the paleoenvironment of the Middle Awash study area in the Afar Rift of Ethiopia. Different aspects of the large mammalian faunal communities from the Asa Koma and Kuseralee Members are examined. The chapter examines the community structure based on locomotor and dietary variables, relative abundances of indicator taxa, and ecomorphology. Independent verification of the results based on large mammalian fauna have been derived from fish, bird, and small mammal faunas and from geological and stable isotopic data.
Scott MacDonald
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190052126
- eISBN:
- 9780190052164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190052126.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This is the first substantive career interview with installation artist Janet Biggs. Biggs discusses her motivation for making installations, rather than theatrical films, and the different ways in ...
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This is the first substantive career interview with installation artist Janet Biggs. Biggs discusses her motivation for making installations, rather than theatrical films, and the different ways in which moviegoers and visitors to installations experience moving image art. Biggs describes her experiences traveling to the ends of the earth to record compelling imagery in the Arctic, at a sulfur-mining operation inside a volcano in Indonesia, and in the Afar triangle region of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, Her many wide-ranging conceptual videos explore various forms of physical labor and athletic endeavor from football to water ballet and synchronized swimming to NASCAR, as well as the mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease and attempts to break the on-land speed record.Less
This is the first substantive career interview with installation artist Janet Biggs. Biggs discusses her motivation for making installations, rather than theatrical films, and the different ways in which moviegoers and visitors to installations experience moving image art. Biggs describes her experiences traveling to the ends of the earth to record compelling imagery in the Arctic, at a sulfur-mining operation inside a volcano in Indonesia, and in the Afar triangle region of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, Her many wide-ranging conceptual videos explore various forms of physical labor and athletic endeavor from football to water ballet and synchronized swimming to NASCAR, as well as the mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease and attempts to break the on-land speed record.
Robert B. Smith and Lee J. Siegel
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195105964
- eISBN:
- 9780197565452
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195105964.003.0006
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Historical Geology
Anyone who drives through southern Idaho on Interstates 84 or 15 must endure hours and hundreds of miles of monotonous scenery: the vast, flat landscape of the Snake River Plain. In many areas, ...
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Anyone who drives through southern Idaho on Interstates 84 or 15 must endure hours and hundreds of miles of monotonous scenery: the vast, flat landscape of the Snake River Plain. In many areas, sagebrush and solidified basalt lava flows extend toward distant mountain ranges, while in other places, farmers have cultivated large expanses of volcanic soil to grow Idaho’s famous potatoes. Southern Idaho’s topography was not always so dull. Mountain ranges once ran through the region. Thanks to the Yellowstone hotspot, however, the pre-existing scenery was destroyed by several dozen of the largest kind of volcanic eruption on Earth—eruptions that formed gigantic craters, known as calderas, measuring a few tens of miles wide. Some 16.5 million years ago, the hotspot was beneath the area where Oregon, Nevada, and Idaho meet. It produced its first big caldera-forming eruptions there. As the North American plate of Earth’s surface drifted southwest over the hotspot, about 100 giant eruptions punched through the drifting plate, forming a chain of giant calderas stretching almost coo miles from the Oregon—Nevada—Idaho border, northeast across Idaho to Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming. Yellowstone has been perched atop the hotspot for the past 2 million years, and a 45-by-30-mile-wide caldera now forms the heart of the national park. After the ancient landscape of southern and eastern Idaho was obliterated by the eruptions, the swath of calderas in the hotspot’s wake formed the eastern two-thirds of the vast, 50-mile-wide valley now known as the Snake River Plain. The calderas eventually were buried by basalt lava flows and sediments from the Snake River and its tributaries, concealing the incredibly violent volcanic history of the Yellowstone hotspot. Yet we now know that the hotspot created much of the flat expanse of the Snake River Plain. Like a boat speeding through water and creating an arc-shaped wave in its wake, the hotspot also left in its wake a parabola-shaped pattern of high mountains and earthquake activity flanking both sides of the Snake River Plain.
Less
Anyone who drives through southern Idaho on Interstates 84 or 15 must endure hours and hundreds of miles of monotonous scenery: the vast, flat landscape of the Snake River Plain. In many areas, sagebrush and solidified basalt lava flows extend toward distant mountain ranges, while in other places, farmers have cultivated large expanses of volcanic soil to grow Idaho’s famous potatoes. Southern Idaho’s topography was not always so dull. Mountain ranges once ran through the region. Thanks to the Yellowstone hotspot, however, the pre-existing scenery was destroyed by several dozen of the largest kind of volcanic eruption on Earth—eruptions that formed gigantic craters, known as calderas, measuring a few tens of miles wide. Some 16.5 million years ago, the hotspot was beneath the area where Oregon, Nevada, and Idaho meet. It produced its first big caldera-forming eruptions there. As the North American plate of Earth’s surface drifted southwest over the hotspot, about 100 giant eruptions punched through the drifting plate, forming a chain of giant calderas stretching almost coo miles from the Oregon—Nevada—Idaho border, northeast across Idaho to Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming. Yellowstone has been perched atop the hotspot for the past 2 million years, and a 45-by-30-mile-wide caldera now forms the heart of the national park. After the ancient landscape of southern and eastern Idaho was obliterated by the eruptions, the swath of calderas in the hotspot’s wake formed the eastern two-thirds of the vast, 50-mile-wide valley now known as the Snake River Plain. The calderas eventually were buried by basalt lava flows and sediments from the Snake River and its tributaries, concealing the incredibly violent volcanic history of the Yellowstone hotspot. Yet we now know that the hotspot created much of the flat expanse of the Snake River Plain. Like a boat speeding through water and creating an arc-shaped wave in its wake, the hotspot also left in its wake a parabola-shaped pattern of high mountains and earthquake activity flanking both sides of the Snake River Plain.