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Engel Ela-Ramud is adjacent to the famous Buia basin, where a 1 million-year-old human skull was located, which was published by the team of Prof. Ernesto Abbate, from the University of Florence, in 1998. However, it is It is a virgin basin, where no research had ever been carried out before because it is located in a military exclusion zone, next to the border with Ethiopia, where during Eritrea's war of independence and since its configuration as a state in , Until now, there has been a continuous latent war conflict.
At this juncture, we were fortunate in , when we obtained permission from the Eritrean authorities for this research project to begin its journey, with the participation of Eritrean and Spanish researchers, in which BTC Users Number Data he collaborated very actively as co-director until 2019, Prof. Eudald Carbonell . Since then, 9 field campaigns have been carried out, the last between which add up to a total of three and a half effective months on the ground. During this time, intense work has been done studying the geology of the basin, and the Quaternary stratigraphic series has been fully prospected in its entirety for the location of paleontological and archaeological records. This has allowed us to gauge its scientific and heritage potential.
The stratigraphic column has a thickness greater than 100 meters, is inclined towards the west and highly fractured, dominated by normal distension faults. At the sedimentary level, it corresponds to a deltaic type environment, where the source area is located in the highlands of Eritrea, located to the west. The series is composed of levels of conglomerates at the base, superimposed by sandy-type strata with a tendency to become finer grained towards the roof. It is at these levels where most of the fossil remains and lithic industry are found. Above, sealing the stratigraphic series and arranged in a discordant manner, there is a package of conglomerates in the western part of the basin, where the town of Engel Ela is located, while in the eastern part a package of volcanic rock, ignimbrite, is located. . The chronological record of the stratigraphic series, dated through combined geochronological methods (paleomagnetism, cosmogenic nuclides, and ESR), corroborated with biochronological data, especially based on the located fossil pigs, includes the second half of the Lower Pleistocene (between 1.8 and 0.7 million years). Then, starting in the Middle Pleistocene, accelerated erosion occurred that continues to the present day, creating a new hydrographic network that goes more than 150 meters deep in the Ramud sector, where the military camp is located.
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發表於 2024-3-9 14:58:37