Dr. Marjolein D. Bosch, PostDoc at the Austrian Archaeological Institute and external lecturer and PalArchGroup member, has just published a paper in Antiquity Project Gallery.
The paper presents the newly excavated site Kanyimangin, West-Turkana, Kenya. The site dates to the Early to Middle Pleistocene Transition (EMPT). The EMPT is characterised by major environmental changes and evolutionary innovations within the genus Homo but the scarcity of the African EMPT fossil and archaeological records obscures its palaeoecological context. Hence, new sets and materials are more than necessary.
The current provisional dating of Kanyimangin puts the site in a period from which only a the few sites are known to date in East Africa: ~1.2–0.75 Ma. The site has a huge potential and its archaeological and palaeontological assemblages offer new opportunities to address questions about the EMPT impact on the behavioural and biological evolution of the genus Homo in Africa.
Mounier, A., Manthi, F. K., Bosch, M. D., Galán, S. S.-D., Chapon-Sao, C., Achyuthan, H., Bahain, J.-J., Daujeard, C., Delagnes, A., Edung, J. E., Falguères, C., Foley, R. A., Hautavoine, H., Noens, G., Stoetzel, E., Tombret, O., Waithira, J., Van Baelen, A., Marín, J., Vidal, C., & Lahr, M. M. (2023). Kanyimangin: the Early to Middle Pleistocene Transition in the south-west of the Turkana Basin. Antiquity, 97(395). 10.15184/aqy.2023.107
