Yonatan Sahle Chemere

YONATAN SAHLE CHEMERE, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, was awared a grant in April 2022 to aid research on “Chronological, Behavioral and Ecological Contexts of Homo sapiens Origins: Evidence from Newly Discovered Hominin-bearing Sites in Ethiopia’s Afar Rift.” Recent paleoanthropological surveys in the Afar Rift of Ethiopia have led to the discovery deposits that represents the latest addition to the roster of hominid-bearing research areas in the region. The extensive deposits in this new study area, called Megenta, have since yielded rich archaeological, fossil, and hominin remains. With funding support, and amid the lingering effects of a global pandemic and regional civil war, the project has now refined the geochronological, behavioral, and ecological contexts of the main archaeology, fauna, and hominid-bearing localities. Because the time period sampled by the Megenta sequence is rare in the African record, these results will contribute substantially to our understanding of the chronological, behavioral, and ecological dynamics at the dawn of our species.