Projects

The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) addresses the scientific possibilities and technical challenges of obtaining sediment drill cores from several of the world's most important fossil hominini- and early palaeolithic artifact sites in Kenya and Ethiopia. The goal is to drill a near-continuous sediment sequence close to sites of crucial importance for the understanding of homine phylogeny to answer questions about the role of environmental influences in man's developmental history. These excavation sites are all currently on land, but consist of thick lacustrine sediment sequences with a high deposition rate. The proposed locations combine the attributes of relatively low costs (compared with open water, deep sea drilling sites) and a potential for long, continuous and informative paleo-environment-related records of lake strata.