A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad,Central Africa

The search for the earliest fossil evidence of the human lineage has been concentrated in East Africa. Here we report the discovery of six hominid specimens from Chad, central Africa, 2,500 km from the East African Rift Valley. The fossils include a nearly complete cranium and fragmentary lower jaws. The associated fauna suggest the fossils are between 6 and 7 million years old. The fossils display a unique mosaic of primitive and derived characters, and constitute a new genus and species of hominid. The distance from the Rift Valley, and the great antiquity of the fossils, suggest that the earliest members of the hominid clade were more widely distributed than has been thought, and that the divergence between the human and chimpanzee lineages was earlier than indicated by most molecular studies.     

New material of the earliest hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad

Discoveries in Chad by the Mission Paleoanthropologique Franco-Tchadienne have substantially changed our understanding of early human evolution in Africa. In particular, the TM 266 locality in the Toros-Menalla fossiliferous area yielded a nearly complete cranium (TM 266-01-60-1), a mandible, and several isolated teeth assigned to Sahelanthropus tchadensis and biochronologically dated to the late Miocene epoch (about 7 million years ago). Despite the relative completeness of the TM 266 cranium, there has been some controversy about its morphology and its status in the hominid clade. Here we describe new dental and mandibular specimens from three Toros-Menalla (Chad) fossiliferous localities (TM 247, TM 266 and TM 292) of the same age. This new material, including a lower canine consistent with a non-honing C/P3 complex, post-canine teeth with primitive root morphology and intermediate radial enamel thickness, is attributed to S. tchadensis. It expands the hypodigm of the species and provides additional anatomical characters that confirm the morphological differences between S. tchadensis and African apes. S. tchadensis presents several key derived features consistent with its position in the hominid clade close to the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.     

Geology and palaeontology of the Late Miocene Middle Awash valley, Afar rift, Ethiopia.

The Middle Awash study area of Ethiopia's Afar rift has yielded abundant vertebrate fossils (approximately 10,000), including several hominid taxa. The study area contains a long sedimentary record spanning Late Miocene (5.3-11.2 Myr ago) to Holocene times. Exposed in a unique tectonic and volcanic transition zone between the main Ethiopian rift (MER) and the Afar rift, sediments along the western Afar rift margin in the Middle Awash provide a unique window on the Late Miocene of Ethiopia. These deposits have now yielded the earliest hominids, described in an accompanying paper and dated here to between 5.54 and 5.77 Myr. These geological and palaeobiological data from the Middle Awash provide fresh perspectives on hominid origins and early evolution. Here we show that these earliest hominids derive from relatively wet and wooded environments that were modulated by tectonic, volcanic, climatic and geomorphic processes. A similar wooded habitat also has been suggested for the 6.0 Myr hominoid fossils recently recovered from Lukeino, Kenya. These findings require fundamental reassessment of models that invoke a significant role for global climatic change and/or savannah habitat in the origin of hominids.     

New hominid skull material from the late Miocene of Macedonia in northern Greece

Miocene hominoid material is very scarce and has previously only been reported as cranial fragments in the Old World. Here we describe a new specimen of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis, which consists of the right part of the face of an adult male with a portion of the frontal bone, a portion of the left part of the face and the maxilla with complete dentition except the right third molar. The characters of this specimen are not congruent with those of Sivapithecus and the pongids, but are more primitive and plesiomorphic for the recent hominid clade (Gorilla, Pan and Homo). The dental characters differ morphologically and metrically from those of the recent great apes and fit better with Australopithecus afarensis. Ouranopithecus now seems the best candidate forerunner of the Plio-pleistocene Homininae (Australopithecus and Homo). This specimen was discovered in September 1989, in the late Miocene deposits of central Macedonia (G.K., L. de B. and G.B.), and prepared by G.K. in Thessaloniki and G. Mouchelin in Poitiers. It comes from the new locality of Xirochori in the red sandstone of the Nea Messimbria formation. The fossil is the property of the University of Thessaloniki, Greece (catalogue number XIR-1).     

Geology and fauna of a new Pliocene locality in north-western Kenya

Lothagam Hill reveals a succession of fossil bearing sediments that extend knowledge of the East African Pliocene back from the base of the Omo succession, to about 5.5 million years.     

New Miocene locality in Turkey with evidence on the origin of Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus.

Collections in early Middle Miocene deposits at Pasalar in Turkey have yielded a very rich fauna. Included in this are two hominoid species referred here to Sivapithecus darwini (Abel) 1902 and Ramapithecus wickeri (Leakey) 1962. These are both more primitive morphologically and earlier in time than other species of these genera, and they provide evdence that Sivapithecus and Ramapithecus are closely related and that their early diversification may have occurred not in Africa but in Eurasia.     

甘肃临夏盆地中新世地层及哺乳动物化石

甘肃临夏地区中新世哺乳动物化石引起学术界的重视。经过考察、发掘,哪现了大量的化石标本。由于发表的文章多为单篇,较分散,笔者收集整理,对材料进行了研究,认为甘肃临夏地区在近直余年来是全国发现中新世材料最多的地区,且有极高的研究价值,填补了我国中新世哺乳动物化石中的部分空白。     

Juvenile hominoid cranium from the terminal Miocene of Yunnan, China

Fossil apes are known from several late Miocene localities in Yunnan Province, southwestern China, principally from Shihuiba (Lufeng) and the Yuanmou Basin, and represent three species of Lufengpithecus. They mostly comprise large samples of isolated teeth, but there are also several partial or complete adult crania from Shihuiba and a single juvenile cranium from Yuanmou. Here we describe a new, relatively complete and largely undistorted juvenile cranium from the terminal Miocene locality of Shuitangba, also in Yunnan. It is only the second ape juvenile cranium recovered from the Miocene of Eurasia and it is provisionally assigned to the species present at Shihuiba, Lufengpithecus lufengensis. Lufengpithecus has most often been linked to the extant orangutan, Pongo pygmaeus, but recent studies of the crania from Shihuiba and Yuanmou have demonstrated that this is unlikely. The new cranium reinforces the view that Lufengpithecus represents a distinct, late surviving lineage of large apes in the late Miocene of East Asia that does not appear to be closely affiliated with any extant ape lineage. It substantially increases knowledge of cranial morphology in Lufengpithecus and demonstrates that species of this genus represent a morphologically diverse radiation of apes, which is consistent with the dynamic tectonic and biotic milieu of southwestern China in the late Miocene.     

Late Miocene hominids from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia.

Molecular studies suggest that the lineages leading to humans and chimpanzees diverged approximately 6.5-5.5 million years (Myr) ago, in the Late Miocene. Hominid fossils from this interval, however, are fragmentary and of uncertain phylogenetic status, age, or both. Here I report new hominid specimens from the Middle Awash area of Ethiopia that date to 5.2-5.8 Myr and are associated with a wooded palaeoenvironment. These Late Miocene fossils are assigned to the hominid genus Ardipithecus and represent the earliest definitive evidence of the hominid clade. Derived dental characters are shared exclusively with all younger hominids. This indicates that the fossils probably represent a hominid taxon that postdated the divergence of lineages leading to modern chimpanzees and humans. However, the persistence of primitive dental and postcranial characters in these new fossils indicates that Ardipithecus was phylogenetically close to the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. These new findings raise additional questions about the claimed hominid status of Orrorin tugenensis, recently described from Kenya and dated to approximately 6 Myr.     

Palaeo-altimetry of the late Eocene to Miocene Lunpola basin, central Tibet

The elevation history of the Tibetan plateau provides direct insight into the tectonic processes associated with continent-continent collisions. Here we present oxygen-isotope-based estimates of the palaeo-altimetry of late Eocene and younger deposits of the Lunpola basin in the centre of the plateau, which indicate that the surface of Tibet has been at an elevation of more than 4 kilometres for at least the past 35 million years. We conclude that crustal, but not mantle, thickening models, combined with plate-kinematic solutions of India-Asia convergence, are compatible with palaeo-elevation estimates across the Tibetan plateau.     

汉中梁山地质

(甲)地位和交通梁由位于汉江的南岸,为大巴山的余脉;分为上,中、下三部分,上梁山在西北,山脚下有上梁山村;下梁山在东南,山脚下有下梁山村,以土地岭与上梁山分界,相距一公里半,中梁山在下梁山的西南,山脚下有小吴家坪村,以中梁寺与下梁山分界,相距一公里.如以小吴家坪为标点,东距汉中八公里,北距褒城十二公里,西北距沔县四十公里.汉水由沔县东流至上下梁山分界处与北来的     

高松山金矿床控矿特征、成因及找矿前景

高松山金矿是与火山作用关系较为密切的浅成低温热液型金矿床。矿石类型主要为含金石英脉—构造角砾岩蚀变岩型。矿石硫同位素组成具有深源硫的特点。流体包裹体中H、O同位素反映在成矿的过程中有大气降水加入。矿床产于中生代上白垩统火山岩中,与英安岩、安山岩、安山玢岩、流纹岩关系密切。岩石化学分析反映了活动大陆边缘环境。金矿体与赋矿围岩存在着明显的物性差异,与Au、Ag、As、Sb、Cu有密切的相关关系,并以零磁场、高电阻为特征,从而本区具备了物化探找矿前提。该区为黑龙江东北部的一个重要的找矿远景区。     

黄山地质探讨

本文旨在从皖南黄山地区地层的形成分布、岩浆岩体的基本特征和地质构造的展布规律,探讨该区地质基础形成发育的过程和区域构造应力场的关系。     

处理器片上缓存内及时局部性环境分析

为提高处理器内核访存效率、命中率和缩短访存延迟,将具有时间和空间关联关系的数据汇集在处理器片上缓存内,数据便具有了有利于处理器内核访存的及时局部性.本文分析了营造及时局部性环境的合理性和及时局部环境因数据迁移而产生的变化规律,为进一步改造片上缓存结构和片上数据迁移提供新的启示.     

ESR dates for the hominid burial site of Es Skhul in Israel

The Middle East has been critical to our understanding of recent human evolution ever since the recovery of Neanderthal and early anatomically modern fossils from the caves of Tabun and Skhul (Mount Carmel) over 50 years ago. It was generally believed, on archaeological and morphological grounds, that middle eastern Neanderthals (such as those from Tabun, Amud and Kebara) probably dated from more than 50,000 years ago, whereas the earliest anatomically modern specimens (from Skhul and Qafzeh) probably dated from about 40,000 years. Recent thermoluminescence and electron spin resonance (ESR) determinations, however, have supported biostratigraphy in dating the Qafzeh deposits to an earlier part of the late Pleistocene, probably more than 90,000 years ago. These dates have been questioned on unspecified technical grounds, and it has also been argued that they create explanatory problems by separating the morphologically similar Qafzeh and Skhul samples by some 50,000 years, thus implying a long-term coexistence of early modern humans and Neanderthals in the area. Here we report the first radiometric dating analysis for Skhul, using ESR on bovine teeth from the hominid burial levels. Early uptake and linear uptake ages average 81 +/- 15 and 101 +/- 12 kyr respectively. These analyses suggest that the Skhul and Qafzeh samples are of a similar age and therefore it is possible that the presence of early modern humans in the area was episodic, rather than long-term during the early late Pleistocene.     

苏米尔盆地中新世海滩岩及沉积环境探讨

对苏米尔盆地布阶下、上段生物屑灰岩的野外观察和实验室岩石学、矿物学、沉积学综合分析结果表明:这些岩石具潮间带和陆上渗流—潜流带胶结特点,其沉积环境为亚热带—热带中至较低能量港湾式海滩,岩石中陆源碎屑来源于邻近区域沉积岩和较远的阿尔卑斯变质岩。     

1912—1937年中国地质科学知识增长的建制化研究

基于1912—1937年即民国肇始至抗战爆发中国地质科学建制化的历程,首次对这一时段中国地质科学的教育科研、学会组织、学术交流等进行了系统的发掘和全面的梳理,认为这一时期地质科学知识的快速增长与地质科学建制化呈正相关关系。     

同安县大同镇地质地貌与土地定级

土地级别的高低由多种因素决定,地貌和地质基础是其中的两个重要因素。本文根据野外调查结果,分析了自然条件对土地级别的影响,简要地阐述了福建省同安县大同镇土地定级中地质基础作用分值的计算方法以及环境地貌的有关问题。