Biochronometric Correlation of Non-Hominid Animal Species

Unraveling the story of human evolution is a tricky business: the evidence is sparse, hard data are infrequent, and fossils tell you nothing of the living biology of the organisms you study. Never-the-less, you are attempting to explain human evolution up to the species Homo ergaster. You have samples from six study sites in south and east Africa. Some are very complete, and include osteological data, paleonotological data, and radiometric data. Other sites are less informative: they only give you a single bit of information. Therefore, to make sense of your data, you have to put together the most parsimonious explanation of the data that you have collected. To do this, you must first seriate your sites, that is, to put them into a chronological order. Each site has two to three strata (numbered 1-2 or 1-3, from top to bottom). Due to the law of superposition, the bottom strata are the oldest, those on top are the youngest. You can assume that the stratigraphic sequence at each site is continuous, that is that there are no gaps in the record. Stratum numbers at one site do not necessarily correlate with stratum numbers at other sites. Because multiple hominid species existed at any one time, and some species survived for considerable lengths of time, use biochronometric correlation—using the non-hominid animal species (in this case, proboscidians) you find to help you get things in the proper order (these fossils are teeth only). In other words, match up the levels at your different sites by matching up the animal fossils that each stratum contains. I will upload the pdf of the hw and lab table.