(ragweed) pollen - A growing aeroallergen of concern in South Africa.

Background: Ragweed is an invasive, highly allergenic weed predicted to expand its habitat with warming global temperatures. Several species have been identified in South Africa for well over a century; however, its presence remained undetected by allergists and aerobiologists until the development of an extensive aerospora monitoring system across South African urban areas since 2019. This paper presents the inventory of preliminary investigation of the airborne pollen and the taxonomic identification of ragweed species.

The South African Pollen Monitoring Network: Insights from 2 years of national aerospora sampling (2019-2021).

Background: Pollen monitoring has been discontinuously undertaken in South Africa, a country with high biodiversity, a seasonal rainfall gradient, and nine biomes from arid to subtropical. The South African Pollen Monitoring Network was set up in 2019 to conduct the first long-term national aerospora monitoring across multiple biomes, providing weekly reports to allergy sufferers and healthcare providers.

Methods: Daily airborne pollen concentrations were measured from August 2019 to August 2021 in seven cities across South Africa.

The first Miocene fossils from coastal woodlands in the southern East African Rift.

The Miocene was a key time in the evolution of African ecosystems witnessing the origin of the African apes and the isolation of eastern coastal forests through an expanding arid corridor. Until recently, however, Miocene sites from the southeastern regions of the continent were unknown. Here, we report the first Miocene fossil teeth from the shoulders of the Urema Rift in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique.

Pliocene hominins from East Turkana were associated with mesic environments in a semiarid basin.

During the middle Pliocene (∼3.8-3.2 Ma), both Australopithecus afarensis and Kenyanthropus platyops are known from the Turkana Basin, but between 3.

Chimpanzee wooden tool analysis advances the identification of percussive technology.

The ability of humans to mediate environmental variation through tool use is likely the key to our success. However, our current knowledge of early cultural evolution derives almost exclusively from studies of stone tools and fossil bones found in the archaeological record. Tools made of plants are intrinsically perishable, and as such are almost entirely absent in the early record of human material culture.

Genomic variation in baboons from central Mozambique unveils complex evolutionary relationships with other Papio species.

Background: Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique hosts a large population of baboons, numbering over 200 troops. Gorongosa baboons have been tentatively identified as part of Papio ursinus on the basis of previous limited morphological analysis and a handful of mitochondrial DNA sequences. However, a recent morphological and morphometric analysis of Gorongosa baboons pinpointed the occurrence of several traits intermediate between P.

Olduvai's oldest Oldowan.

Previously, Olduvai Bed I excavations revealed Oldowan assemblages <1.85 Ma, mainly in the eastern gorge. New western gorge excavations locate a much older ∼2.

A missing piece of the Papio puzzle: Gorongosa baboon phenostructure and intrageneric relationships.

Most authors recognize six baboon species: hamadryas (Papio hamadryas), Guinea (Papio papio), olive (Papio anubis), yellow (Papio cynocephalus), chacma (Papio ursinus), and Kinda (Papio kindae). However, there is still debate regarding the taxonomic status, phylogenetic relationships, and the amount of gene flow occurring between species. Here, we present ongoing research on baboon morphological diversity in Gorongosa National Park (GNP), located in central Mozambique, south of the Zambezi River, at the southern end of the East African Rift System.

The first Loranthaceae fossils from Africa.

An ongoing re-investigation of the early Miocene Saldanha Bay (South Africa) palynoflora, using combined light and scanning electron microscopy (single grain method), is revealing several pollen types new to the African fossil record. One of the elements identified is Loranthaceae pollen. These grains represent the first and only fossil record of Loranthaceae in Africa.

Pleistocene fossil woods from the Okote Member, site FwJj 14 in the Ileret region, Koobi Fora Formation, northern Kenya.

On the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya are extensive Plio-Pleistocene deposits containing a rich diversity of fossil mammals, hominins and flora within the radiometrically dated tuffaceous, lacustrine and fluvial sequence. Reconstruction of this landscape and paleoenvironment are part of an ongoing multinational and multidisciplinary human evolution project in the eastern Turkana Basin. Today there is a huge lake in the Rift Valley but it has fluctuated since the early Pliocene.

X-rays and virtual taphonomy resolve the first Cissus (Vitaceae) macrofossils from Africa as early-diverging members of the genus.

Premise Of The Study: Fossilized seeds similar to Cissus (Vitaceae) have been recognized from the Miocene of Kenya, though some were previously assigned to the Menispermaceae. We undertook a comparative survey of extant African Cissus seeds to identify the fossils and consider their implications for the evolution and biogeography of Cissus and for African early Miocene paleoenvironments.

Methods: Micro-computed tomography (µCT) and synchrotron-based X-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM) were used to study seed morphology and anatomy.

In situ ∼2.0 Ma trees discovered as fossil rooted stumps, lowermost Bed I, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

The discovery of fossil rooted tree stumps in lowermost Lower Bed I from the western Olduvai Basin, Tanzania, age-bracketed by the Naabi Ignimbrite (2.038 ± 0.005 Ma) and Tuff IA (1.

Early evidence of San material culture represented by organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa.

Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed that pigment use, beads, engravings, and sophisticated stone and bone tools were already present in southern Africa 75,000 y ago. Many of these artifacts disappeared by 60,000 y ago, suggesting that modern behavior appeared in the past and was subsequently lost before becoming firmly established. Most archaeologists think that San hunter-gatherer cultural adaptation emerged 20,000 y ago.

The diet of Australopithecus sediba.

Specimens of Australopithecus sediba from the site of Malapa, South Africa (dating from approximately 2 million years (Myr) ago) present a mix of primitive and derived traits that align the taxon with other Australopithecus species and with early Homo. Although much of the available cranial and postcranial material of Au. sediba has been described, its feeding ecology has not been investigated.

Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa.

The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence--in the form of burned bone and ashed plant remains--that burning took place in the cave during the early Acheulean occupation, approximately 1.0 Ma.

Environments and hominin activities across the FLK Peninsula during Zinjanthropus times (1.84 Ma), Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

We establish through 13 excavations the landscape context and nature of hominin activities across the Zinjanthropus land surface from which the Leakeys recovered the FLK 22 and FLK NN 1 paleoanthropological assemblages. The land surface was created by fluvial incision of the eastern margin of paleo-Lake Olduvai following a major lake withdrawal. Erosion was uneven, leaving a peninsula bounded by a river channel, the FLK Fault, and a freshwater wetland.

Middle Stone Age bedding construction and settlement patterns at Sibudu, South Africa.

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is associated with early behavioral innovations, expansions of modern humans within and out of Africa, and occasional population bottlenecks. Several innovations in the MSA are seen in an archaeological sequence in the rock shelter Sibudu (South Africa). At ~77,000 years ago, people constructed plant bedding from sedges and other monocotyledons topped with aromatic leaves containing insecticidal and larvicidal chemicals.

Landscape distribution of Oldowan stone artifact assemblages across the fault compartments of the eastern Olduvai Lake Basin during early lowermost Bed II times.

The density and composition of Oldowan stone artifact assemblages deposited during the first ca. 20,000 years of lowermost Bed II times show a recurrent pattern of variation across recognized synsedimentary faults that compartmentalized landscapes of the eastern Olduvai Lake Basin. When active, the faults created minor topographic relief.

Vegetation during UMBI and deposition of Tuff IF at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (ca. 1.8 Ma) based on phytoliths and plant remains.

As part of ongoing research at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, to determine the detailed paleoenvironmental setting during Bed I and Bed II times and occupation of the basin by early hominins, we present the results of phytolith analyses of Tuff IF which is the uppermost unit of Bed I. Phytoliths were identified in most of the levels and localities on the eastern paleolake margin, but there are not always sufficient numbers of identifiable morphologies to infer the specific type of vegetation due to dissolution. Some surge surfaces and reworked tuff surfaces were vegetated between successive ash falls, as indicated by root-markings and the presence of a variety of phytolith morphotypes.

Fossil sedges, macroplants, and roots from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

A variety of macroplants has been recorded and collected from the eastern paleolake margin of Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, from Upper Bed I and Lower Bed II, dated at ~1.7-1.85 Ma.

Early hominin diet included diverse terrestrial and aquatic animals 1.95 Ma in East Turkana, Kenya.

The manufacture of stone tools and their use to access animal tissues by Pliocene hominins marks the origin of a key adaptation in human evolutionary history. Here we report an in situ archaeological assemblage from the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya that provides a unique combination of faunal remains, some with direct evidence of butchery, and Oldowan artifacts, which are well dated to 1.95 Ma.

Taphonomy of the early Miocene flora, Hiwegi Formation, Rusinga Island, Kenya.

A fossil flora was collected in situ from early Miocene deposits at site R117 in the Hiwegi Formation of Rusinga Island contemporaneous with and in close proximity to the sites from where the anthropoid primates were recovered. The flora exhibits a spatially and temporally patchy distribution of fruits and seeds, mixed with twigs of various sizes, fragments of wood, bark, and leaves, all with random orientations and very low depositional dips. There has been minimal transport and the flora evidently accumulated as in situ litter beneath local vegetation.

Past and present vegetation ecology of Laetoli, Tanzania.

We are attempting to set up a new protocol for palaeoecological reconstruction in relation to the fossil hominin site Laetoli, Tanzania. This is based on the premise that habitat variability in the past was at least as great as at present; that this variability at the landscape level is a function of variations in geology, soils, and topography rather than climate; and that vegetation type at the landscape level can be reconstructed from these environmental variables. Measurable variation in climate in tropical Africa today occurs over distances of at least 100 km, so that ranges of habitat variation within the limited area of Laetoli today can be reconstructed in relation to soils and topography, and the effects of climate changes are then estimated in relation to these other factors.