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      3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya.

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          Abstract

          Human evolutionary scholars have long supposed that the earliest stone tools were made by the genus Homo and that this technological development was directly linked to climate change and the spread of savannah grasslands. New fieldwork in West Turkana, Kenya, has identified evidence of much earlier hominin technological behaviour. We report the discovery of Lomekwi 3, a 3.3-million-year-old archaeological site where in situ stone artefacts occur in spatiotemporal association with Pliocene hominin fossils in a wooded palaeoenvironment. The Lomekwi 3 knappers, with a developing understanding of stone's fracture properties, combined core reduction with battering activities. Given the implications of the Lomekwi 3 assemblage for models aiming to converge environmental change, hominin evolution and technological origins, we propose for it the name 'Lomekwian', which predates the Oldowan by 700,000 years and marks a new beginning to the known archaeological record.

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          Most cited references46

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          The least-squares line and plane and the analysis of palaeomagnetic data

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            Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia.

            The oldest direct evidence of stone tool manufacture comes from Gona (Ethiopia) and dates to between 2.6 and 2.5 million years (Myr) ago. At the nearby Bouri site several cut-marked bones also show stone tool use approximately 2.5 Myr ago. Here we report stone-tool-inflicted marks on bones found during recent survey work in Dikika, Ethiopia, a research area close to Gona and Bouri. On the basis of low-power microscopic and environmental scanning electron microscope observations, these bones show unambiguous stone-tool cut marks for flesh removal and percussion marks for marrow access. The bones derive from the Sidi Hakoma Member of the Hadar Formation. Established (40)Ar-(39)Ar dates on the tuffs that bracket this member constrain the finds to between 3.42 and 3.24 Myr ago, and stratigraphic scaling between these units and other geological evidence indicate that they are older than 3.39 Myr ago. Our discovery extends by approximately 800,000 years the antiquity of stone tools and of stone-tool-assisted consumption of ungulates by hominins; furthermore, this behaviour can now be attributed to Australopithecus afarensis.
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              Woody cover and hominin environments in the past 6 million years.

              The role of African savannahs in the evolution of early hominins has been debated for nearly a century. Resolution of this issue has been hindered by difficulty in quantifying the fraction of woody cover in the fossil record. Here we show that the fraction of woody cover in tropical ecosystems can be quantified using stable carbon isotopes in soils. Furthermore, we use fossil soils from hominin sites in the Awash and Omo-Turkana basins in eastern Africa to reconstruct the fraction of woody cover since the Late Miocene epoch (about 7 million years ago). (13)C/(12)C ratio data from 1,300 palaeosols at or adjacent to hominin sites dating to at least 6 million years ago show that woody cover was predominantly less than ∼40% at most sites. These data point to the prevalence of open environments at the majority of hominin fossil sites in eastern Africa over the past 6 million years.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Nature
                Nature
                1476-4687
                0028-0836
                May 21 2015
                : 521
                : 7552
                Affiliations
                [1 ] 1] Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-4364, USA [2] CNRS, UMR 7055, Préhistoire et Technologie, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 21 allée de l'Université, 92023 Nanterre Cedex, France [3] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya.
                [2 ] 1] Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-4364, USA [2] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [3] Department of Anthropology and Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901, USA.
                [3 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] Department of Anthropology and Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901, USA [3] Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA.
                [4 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA [3] Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.
                [5 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] CNRS, UPR 2147, Dynamique de l'Evolution Humaine, 44 rue de l'Amiral Mouchez, 75014 Paris, France.
                [6 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] CNRS, UMR 5199 PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, 33615 Pessac, France.
                [7 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA [3] Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey 07079, USA.
                [8 ] 1] CNRS, UMR 5199 PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, 33615 Pessac, France [2] Inrap, Centre Mixte de Recherche Archéologique, Domaine de Campagne, 24620 Campagne, France.
                [9 ] CNRS, UMR 7055, Préhistoire et Technologie, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 21 allée de l'Université, 92023 Nanterre Cedex, France.
                [10 ] 1] CNRS, UMR 7055, Préhistoire et Technologie, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 21 allée de l'Université, 92023 Nanterre Cedex, France [2] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya.
                [11 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] Inrap, 34-36 avenue Paul-Vaillant Couturier, 93120 La Courneuve, France.
                [12 ] IPHEP, Institut de Paléoprimatologie, Paléontologie Humaine: Évolution et Paléoenvironnements, CNRS, UMR 7262, Université de Poitiers, Bât. B35 - TSA 51106, 6 rue Michel Brunet, 86073 Poitiers Cedex 9, France.
                [13 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, MCC, UMR 7269, LAMPEA, 13094 Aix-en-Provence Cedex 2, France.
                [14 ] Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-4364, USA.
                [15 ] Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA.
                [16 ] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya.
                [17 ] 1] West Turkana Archaeological Project, P.O. Box 40658-00100, Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya [2] National Museums of Kenya, Department of Earth Sciences, Archaeology Section, P.O. Box 40658-00100 Ngara Rd, Nairobi, Kenya.
                [18 ] 1] Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA [2] Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA.
                Article
                nature14464
                10.1038/nature14464
                25993961
                afdb69fd-bc49-4a17-a57e-34bfd74c468c
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