GEOLOGY AND VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY OF THE EARLY PLIOCENE SITE OF KANAPOI, Ebooki - biologiczne [eng]
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N
UMBER
498
24 D
ECEMBER
2003
C
ONTRIBUTIONS
G
EOLOGY AND
V
ERTEBRATE
P
ALEONTOLOGY
OF THE
E
ARLY
P
LIOCENE
S
ITE OF
K
ANAPOI
,
N
ORTHERN
K
ENYA
E
DITED BY
J
OHN
M. H
ARRIS AND
M
EAVE
G. L
EAKEY
IN
S
CIENCE
S
ERIAL
P
UBLICATIONS
OF THE
N
ATURAL
H
ISTORY
M
USEUM OF
L
OS
A
NGELES
C
OUNTY
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S
CIENTIFIC
P
UBLICATIONS
C
OMMITTEE
John Heyning, Deputy Director
for Research and Collections
John M. Harris, Committee Chairman
Brian V. Brown
Gordon Hendler
Inés Horovitz
Joel W. Martin
K. Victoria Brown, Managing Editor
N
ATURAL
H
ISTORY
M
USEUM
OF
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OS
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NGELES
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OUNTY
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XPOSITION
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OULEVARD
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OS
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NGELES
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Printed at Allen Press, Inc., Lawrence, Kansas
ISSN 0459-8113
G
EOLOGY AND
V
ERTEBRATE
P
ALEONTOLOGY OF THE
E
ARLY
P
LIOCENE
S
ITE OF
K
ANAPOI
,
N
ORTHERN
K
ENYA
E
DITED BY
J
OHN
M. H
ARRIS
1
AND
M
EAVE
G. L
EAKEY
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1
John M. Harris and Meave G. Leakey
Stratigraphy and Depositional Setting of the Pliocene Kanapoi Formation,
Lower Kerio Valley, Kenya ........................................................................................ 9
Craig S. Feibel
Fossil Fish Remains from the Pliocene Kanapoi Site, Kenya .......................................... 21
Kathlyn Stewart
Early Pliocene Tetrapod Remains from Kanapoi, Lake Turkana Basin, Kenya.................. 39
John M. Harris, Meave G. Leakey, and Thure E. Cerling
with an Appendix by Alisa J. Winkler
Carnivora from the Kanapoi Hominid Site, Turkana Basin, Northern Kenya ................. 115
Lars Werdelin
1. George C. Page Museum, 5801 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90036, USA.
2. National Museums of Kenya, PO Box 40658, Nairobi, Kenya.
Contributions in Science, Number 498, pp. 1–132
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 2003
I
NTRODUCTION
J
OHN
M. H
ARRIS
1
AND
M
EAVE
G. L
EAKEY
2
The site of Kanapoi lies to the southwest of Lake
Turkana in northern Kenya (Fig. 1). Vertebrate fos-
sils were recovered from Kanapoi in the 1960s by
Harvard University expeditions and in the 1990s
by National Museums of Kenya expeditions. The
assemblage of vertebrate fossils from Kanapoi is
both prolic and diverse and, because of its depo-
sitional context of uviatile and deltaic sediments
that accumulated during a major lacustrine phase,
exemplies a time interval that is otherwise not well
represented in the Lake Turkana Basin. Kanapoi
has yielded one of the few well-dated early Pliocene
assemblages from sub-Saharan Africa but hitherto
only the hominins, proboscideans, perissodactyls,
and suids recovered from this locality have received
more than cursory treatment. The four papers pre-
sented in this contribution document the geologic
context and diversity of the Kanapoi fossil verte-
brate biota.
cluded further eldwork in the area for more than
a decade.
In the mid-1960s, L.H. Robbins investigated the
terminal Pleistocene and Holocene archaeology of
the southwestern portion of the Lake Turkana Ba-
sin (Robbins, 1967, 1972). Robbins let it be known
that the region also contained somewhat older fos-
sils and, in 1966, Bryan Patterson initiated a series
of Harvard University expeditions to the region be-
tween the lower Kerio and Turkwell Rivers. Patter-
son’s expeditions focused initially on the Kanapoi
region (1966–67) and subsequently on Lothagam
(1967–72). Assemblages from the two localities
shed much light on the late Miocene–early Pliocene
vertebrate biota of sub-Saharan Africa and provid-
ed the basis for monographic revisions of elephan-
tids (Maglio, 1973), perissodactyls (Hooijer and
Patterson, 1972; Hooijer and Maglio, 1974), and
suids (Cooke and Ewer, 1972). The Patterson ex-
peditions recovered few primate fossils but docu-
mented a hominid mandible from Lothagam (Pat-
terson et al., 1970; Leakey and Walker, 2003) and
a hominin humerus from Kanapoi (Patterson and
Howells, 1967; Ward et al., 2001).
In 1967, a joint French, American, and Kenyan
expedition (International Omo Research Expedi-
tion) resumed exploration of Plio–Pleistocene ex-
posures in the lower Omo Valley. In 1968, the Ken-
yan contingent withdrew from the IORE to pros-
pect the northeast shore of Lake Rudolf. The East
Rudolf Research Project became the Koobi Fora
Research Project when the Government of Kenya
changed the name of the lake to Lake Turkana in
1975. The International Omo Research Expedi-
tions (1967–76) and Koobi Fora Research Project
(1968–78) recovered a great wealth of Plio–Pleis-
tocene vertebrate fossils, including important new
hominin material. Monographic treatment of ma-
terial from the Omo Shungura sequence was pub-
lished in the
Cahiers de Palontologie
series edited
by Y. Coppens and F. C. Howell (e.g., Eisenmann,
1985; Gentry, 1985; Eck and Jablonsky, 1987).
That from Koobi Fora was published in the KFRP
monograph series of Clarendon Press (Leakey and
Leakey, 1978; Harris, 1983, 1991; Wood, 1994;
Isaac, 1997).
During the 1980s, National Museums of Kenya
expeditions under the leadership of Richard Leakey
explored the sedimentary exposures on the west
side of Lake Turkana (Harris et al., 1988a, 1988b).
Small but signicant Plio–Pleistocene vertebrate as-
semblages included the rst cranium of
Australo-
pithecus aethiopicus
(Walker et al., 1986) and a rel-
atively complete skeleton of
Homo ergaster
(Brown
et al., 1985; Walker and Leakey, 1993).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Lake Turkana Basin (formerly the Lake Rudolf
Basin) traverses the western Kenya–Ethiopia border
and has been an important source of Neogene ter-
restrial vertebrate fossils since the early part of the
twentieth century (Coppens and Howell, 1983)
(Fig. 1). In 1888, Count Samuel Teleki von Szk
and Ludwig Ritter von H¨ hnel were the rst Eu-
ropean explorers to reach the lake (H¨ hnel, 1938),
which they named Lake Rudolf after Crown Prince
Rudolf of Austria-Hungary (1859–89). The subse-
quent French expedition of Bourg de Bozas (1902–
03) recovered vertebrate fossils from Plio–Pleisto-
cene exposures in the lower Omo Valley (Haug,
1912; Joleaud, 1920a, 1920b, 1928, 1930, 1933;
Boulenger, 1920). This discovery prompted the
Mission Scientique de l’Omo (1932–33), which
further documented the geology and paleontology
of the area to the north of the Omo Delta (Aram-
bourg, 1935, 1943, 1947). Allied military forces
occupied southern Ethiopia during World War II;
vertebrate fossils collected during the occupation
were forwarded to the Coryndon Museum in Nai-
robi (now the National Museums of Kenya) and in
1942 L.S.B. Leakey (honorary curator of the Cor-
yndon Museum) sent his Kenyan staff to collect
from the southern Ethiopian Omo deposits (Lea-
key, 1943). Political unrest in both Kenya and Ethi-
opia after the end of the Second World War pre-
1. George C. Page Museum, 5801 Wilshire Boulevard,
Los Angeles, California 90036, USA.
2. National Museums of Kenya, PO Box 40658, Nai-
robi, Kenya.
Contributions in Science, Number 498, pp. 1–7
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 2003
2
m
CS 498, Harris and Leakey: Kanapoi
Figure 1
Map of late Miocene through Pleistocene fossiliferous localities in the Lake Turkana Basin (after Harris et al.,
1988b)
During the 1990s, National Museums of Kenya
expeditions, now under the leadership of Meave
Leakey, concentrated on the southwest portion of
the Lake Turkana Basin, discovering new localities
(Ward et al., 1999) as well as revisiting Lothagam
and Kanapoi. Lothagam was reworked from 1989
to 1993 and monographic treatment of the biota
has now been published (Leakey and Harris, 2003).
The Kanapoi locality was reprospected from 1993
to 1997 (Leakey et al., 1995, 1998). Hominin ma-
terial recovered by the National Museums of Kenya
expeditions has been described in detail (Ward et
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