Fossile Cichlidae (Perciformes, Teleostei) der Ngorora Fisch-Lagerstätte in den Tugen Hills (Kenia): Schlüssel zur Rekonstruktion der Binnengewässernetze im Miozän von Ost-Afrika

• Antragstellerin: Professorin Dr. Bettina Reichenbacher
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Paläontologie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2012 bis 2019
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 225707973

The fossil record represents a very important source of direct information for the understanding of the diversity, biology, and evolutionary history of organisms. However, the modern African freshwater fish fauna, comprising about 3000 species, has a poor fossil record. Even from the youngest epochs, i.e. the Neogene and Pleistocene, only about 60 taxa are known. Additionally, these taxa are mainly based on isolated fish remains (teeth, vertebrae, bones), and completely preserved articulated skeletons are extremely scarce. The proposed project is based on the hypothesis that fish fossils from archives with high preservation quality for fossils, i.e. yielding complete specimens, significantly enhance our knowledge of the evolutionary history of Africas freshwater fish fauna, and represent excellent proxy indicators for biogeographical relations and hydrological patterns, palaeoenvironments and palaeoclimate. The project aims at exploring such archives in the Tugen Hills in the Central Kenya Rift within the eastern branch of the East African Rift System. In this area, Middle to Upper Miocene palaeolake sediments of five time-intervals are known to yield many complete fish fossils, which previously have not been collected or studied. The project work includes new collections of fossils and outcrop logging by joint field-campaigns with Kenyan and French partners and the German research group outlined here. Fish fossils will be identified at species level; their biology and evolutionary history will be reconstructed. Compositions of fish faunas will be used for the interpretation of biogeographical relations and hydrological patterns, and, together with co-occurring other fossils (diatoms, palynomorphs) and sedimentological data, for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimate reconstructions. As the Neogene of East Africa is highly sigificant for early hominid evolution, the project results will be particular interesting also for scientists in many other disciplines.

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen