Amara Reed

I will employ strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotope analyses of sequentially sampled fossil teeth to characterise mobility strategies of ungulates recovered from Plio-Pleistocene hominin sites.

PhD project title:

Reconstructing Plio-Pleistocene ungulate migrations in East Africa

Project description:

Amara Reed PhD student

Ungulate migrations historically dominated East African grasslands. Driven by seasonal variations in resource quality and quantity, the continuous movements of migratory herds are vital for shaping and maintaining grassland ecosystems, promoting healthy ecosystem function and increased biodiversity by facilitating nutrient transport, modifying vegetation profiles, and supporting large predator populations. Migratory behaviour is theorised to have a complex evolutionary history, originating independently several times since the mid-Miocene, concurrent with global temperature cooling and widespread C4 grassland expansion, but the contribution of migratory species to fossil faunal assemblages remains poorly understood.


Stable isotope analysis of fossil teeth can be used to reconstruct past animal behaviour as the isotopic composition of dietary and drinking water sources are incorporated into enamel during mineralisation, after which enamel remains metabolically inert. These data can be provenanced using isoscapes, which map isotope distribution spatially. I will employ strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotope analyses of sequentially sampled fossil teeth to characterise mobility strategies of ungulates recovered from Plio-Pleistocene hominin sites in the Omo-Turkana Basin (Ethiopia and Kenya), as well as Laetoli and Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania). Analysis of well-provenanced, wild-shot historic specimens will form an isotopic framework to which fossil specimens will be compared.

This work will also produce the first bioavailable strontium isoscape for the Omo-Turkana Basin. The prehistory of ungulate migrations in East Africa, migratory responses to Plio-Pleistocene climatic and environmental trends, implications for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions and hominin palaeoecology, and threats to extant migratory systems under future climate change scenarios will all be explored.

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