Scientific Drilling in the East African Rift Lakes

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The East African Rift lakes offer unparalleled opportunities to investigate fundamental climate, environmental, biological, and geological processes through deep coring into the lake bed. Their sediments hold signals of the evolution of tropical rainfall, temperatures, and winds across 20􀁱 of latitude on both sides of the equator from the Miocene to the present. Fossil material in these basins chronicles the development of the East African landscapes in which our own species evolved, and records the explosive evolutionary radiation of literally thousands of species of fish, snails, and other aquatic organisms endemic to East Africa’s lakes. Drilling these sediments will also provide insights into the tectonic processes that shape the largest active continental rift system on Earth today.