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Soil and Plant Phytoliths from the Acacia-Commiphora Mosaics at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)
| Description: | This dataset pertains to the study of soil and plant phytoliths from the Eastern Serengeti Plains, specifically the Acacia-Commiphora mosaics from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. The soil phytolith transect extends 100 ha and comprises 35 samples. Botanic collection was aimed at investigating the range of species present in the study area, learning about their phytolith production and morphotype characteristics, and comparing the botanical dataset with the soil group. We studied 29 species (20 genera, 15 families). Quantification aimed at discovering relationships amongst the soil and plant phytoliths relative distributions through Chi–square independence tests, establishing the statistical significance of the relationship between categorical variables within the two populations. For the soils we tallied 10,745 phytoliths (64 morphotypes grouped into 15 classes). Plants yielded 4,310 phytoliths (morphotypes = 52, classes = 13). In topsoils, the woody phytolith group dominates all terrain ranks, and appears to increase with denser plant cover, while grass phytoliths peak in sparsely vegetated terrain. The morphotypes from woody plants are led by the spherical class. The Poaceae produce ovates, towers, and horned towers. We provide a phytolith analog for the Acacia-Commiphora ecozone, explore whether soil phytoliths mirror the physiognomy and composition of vegetation aboveground, issues of catchment size, as well as time averaging, heterogeneity, and adequate sampling methods. From a phytolith perspective, this analog comprises seven phytolith classes: Four from woody tissue and three from grasses. In addition, we created a phytolith reference collection of characteristic plants from this ecosystem that can aid in the taxonomic identification of phytoliths from ancient sediments and soils. |
| Authors: | Mercader, Julio; University of Calgary;  0000-0002-5637-7937Clarke, Siobhan; University of Calgary; 0000-0003-3489-6338Bundala, Mariam; University of Calgary; University of Dar es Salaam Favreau, Julien; University of Calgary Inwood, Jamie; University of Calgary; 0000-0003-3980-5730Itambu, Makarius; University of Calgary; University of Dar es Salaam Larter, Fergus; University of Calgary Lee, Patrick; University of Calgary; University of Toronto Lewiski-McQuaid, Garnet; University of Calgary Mollel, Neduvoto; National Herbarium of Tanzania; Tropical Pesticides Research Institute Mwambwiga, Aloyce; University of Calgary; Arusha National Natural History Museum Patalano, Robert; University of Calgary Soto, María; University of Calgary; 0000-0003-4154-5384Tucker, Laura; University of Calgary Walde, Dale; University of Calgary; ASM Research Group |
| Keywords: | African palaeoenvironments Soil and Plant phytoliths Acacia-Commiphora woodland and grassland mosaics Reference collections East Africa Analog for early human evolution |
| Field of Research: | Other social sciences > Anthropology > Social and cultural anthropology
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| Publication Date: | 2018-11-20 |
| Publisher: | Federated Research Data Repository / dépôt fédéré de données de recherche |
| Funder: | Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); 895-2016-1017 |
| URI: | https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0122 |
| Related Identifiers: |
This dataset is cited by
This dataset is supplemented by
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| Geographic Coverage: | Place Name Olduvai Gorge Country Tanzania |
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Access to this dataset is subject to the following terms:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Citation
Mercader, J., Clarke, S., Bundala, M., Favreau, J., Inwood, J., Itambu, M., Larter, F., Lee, P., Lewiski-McQuaid, G., Mollel, N., Mwambwiga, A., Patalano, R., Soto, M., Tucker, L., Walde, D. (2018). Soil and Plant Phytoliths from the Acacia-Commiphora Mosaics at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania). Federated Research Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.20383/101.0122
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