EVENTS

STOQ 2009 – THE STOQ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
«BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION. Facts and Theories»

Abstracts of the Lectures:

Yves Coppens, Collége de France, France

The (H)Omo Event 

Three million years ago (or a little less), a climatic change happened in the whole world; it was a drought in tropical areas, a cooling everywhere else.
In tropical Africa, as elsewhere, the fauna had to react to try adaptations to the new environment to survive. Some animals became extinct ; some left the country, some arrived and some – most of them actually – « found » successful answers to the situation : transformation of diet and teeth (Elephants, Suids, Equids, Hominids), transformation of locomotion (Equids, Hominids), transformation of the brain (Hominids).
It was the time and the reason for the transformation of Prehumans into Humans, the reason of the emergence of the genus Homo.
As the very close link between the evolution of the environment and Hominid evolution has been demonstrated, for the first time, in the seventies, thanks to the fossil of the sediments of the Lower Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia, I proposed this bad pun (H)Omo event to call the climate crisis at the origin of Man’s birth and the pioneer role of the Omo area in this so important discovery.