Journal ArticleDOI
Plio-Pleistocene African Climate
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TLDR
Major steps in the evolution of African hominids and other vertebrates are coincident with shifts to more arid, open conditions near 2.8 Ma, suggesting that some Pliocene (Plio)-Pleistocene speciation events may have been climatically mediated.Abstract:
Marine records of African climate variability document a shift toward more arid conditions after 2.8 million years ago (Ma), evidently resulting from remote forcing by cold North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures associated with the onset of Northern Hemisphere glacial cycles. African climate before 2.8 Ma was regulated by low-latitude insolation forcing of monsoonal climate due to Earth orbital precession. Major steps in the evolution of African hominids and other vertebrates are coincident with shifts to more arid, open conditions near 2.8 Ma, 1.7 Ma, and 1.0 Ma, suggesting that some Pliocene (Plio)-Pleistocene speciation events may have been climatically mediated.read more
Citations
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Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
J. R. Petit,Jean Jouzel,Dominique Raynaud,J. M. Barnola,I. Basile,Michael L. Bender,Jérôme Chappellaz,Michael Davis,Gilles Delaygue,Marc Delmotte,V. M. Kotlyakov,Michel Legrand,Vladimir Ya. Lipenkov,C. Lorius,L. Pepin,Catherine Ritz,Eric S. Saltzman,Michel Stievenard +17 more
TL;DR: The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles.
Journal ArticleDOI
Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica
J. R. Petit,Jean Jouzel,Dominique Raynaud,Nartsiss I. Barkov,I. Basile,Michael L. Bender,Jérôme Chappellaz,M. Davisk,G. Delaygue,Marc Delmotte,V. M. Kotlyakov,Michel Legrand,Vladimir Ya. Lipenkov,C. Lorius,Catherine Ritz,E. Saltzmank,Michel Stievenard +16 more
TL;DR: The recent completion of drilling at Vostok station in East Antarctica has allowed the extension of the ice record of atmospheric composition and climate to the past four glacial-interglacial cycles as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
African climate change and faunal evolution during the Pliocene-Pleistocene
TL;DR: In this paper, the best dated and most complete African mammal fossil databases indicate African faunal assemblage and speciation changes during the Pliocene-Pleistocene interval (the last ca. 5.3 million years) were mediated by changes in African climate or shifts in climate variability.
Journal ArticleDOI
The middle Pleistocene transition: characteristics, mechanisms, and implications for long-term changes in atmospheric pCO2
Peter U. Clark,David Archer,David Pollard,Joel D. Blum,J. A. Rial,Victor Brovkin,Alan C. Mix,Nicklas G Pisias,Martin Roy +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the emergence of low-frequency, high-amplitude, quasi-periodic (∼100-kyr) glacial variability during the middle Pleistocene in the absence of any significant change in orbital forcing indicates a fundamental change internal to the climate system.
Journal ArticleDOI
Paleolithic Technology and Human Evolution
TL;DR: This work has shown that stone tool technology, robust australopithecines, and the genus Homo appeared almost simultaneously 2.5 million years ago, and once this adaptive threshold was crossed, technological evolution was accompanied by increased brain size, population size, and geographical range.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Insolation values for the climate of the last 10 million years
André Berger,Marie-France Loutre +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, new values for the astronomical parameters of the Earth's orbit and rotation (eccentricity, obliquity and precession) are proposed for paleoclimatic research related to the Late Miocene, the Pliocene and the Quaternary.
Journal ArticleDOI
An alternative astronomical calibration of the lower Pleistocene timescale based on ODP Site 677
TL;DR: In this paper, a modified version of the timescale proposed by Imbrieet et al. for the ODP Site 677 has been proposed, based on the precession signal in the record from ODP site 677 that provides the basis for the revised timescale.
Book
The Measurement Of Power Spectra: From The Point Of View Of Communications Engineering
Ralph B Blackman,John W. Tukey +1 more
TL;DR: This account attempts to provide and relate the necessary ideas and techniques in reasonable detail to develop the insight necessary to plan both the acquisition of adequate data and sound procedures for its reduction to meaningful estimates.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sahel rainfall and worldwide sea temperatures, 1901–85
TL;DR: Using the comprehensively quality-controlled Meteorological Office Historical Sea Surface Temperature data set (MOHSST), this paper showed that persistently wet and dry periods in the Sahel region of Africa are strongly related to contrasting patterns of sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies on a near-global scale.