Drilling for clues to our ancestors’ extinction

A UA professor recently began a lakebed drilling project in the African Rift Valley to determine what role climate change may have played in the evolution of humans and, maybe, how it will affect us in the future.

Andy Cohen, the principal investigator of the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project and a UA professor of geosciences, began drilling with his team last summer in Kenya at a site in the Tugen Hills.

The team of more than 50 scientists from nine countries has received multiple grants to fund the project, including a recent $4.78 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

The team is targeting core samples of lakebed deposits that show certain time intervals, Cohen said. Three of the team’s five drilling sites are in areas that have existing Hominin records, he said.

Read the full story as it appeared in the Arizona Daily Star here.