Reconstructing Pleistocene ungulate migration in the Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem

Ungulate mass migrations have historically dominated African grasslands. Today, due to a variety of anthropogenic impacts, mass migrations are restricted to discrete protected landscapes.

The Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem (GSME) (Kenya/Tanzania) hosts the Serengeti Migration, wherein two million blue wildebeest, plains zebra, and Thomson's gazelle migrate cyclically across the ecosystem in response to seasonal variability in freshwater and forage quality and quantity.

Ungulate migrations are hypothesised to have evolved several times concurrent with mid-Miocene C4 grassland expansion, but the origin of mass migration within the GSME and the contribution of migratory species to fossil faunal assemblages are poorly understood.

This project will characterise mobility strategies of ungulates commonly recovered from Pleistocene hominin sites, namely Olduvai Gorge, using stable strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotope analyses of fossil teeth.

An isotopic framework for migratory behaviour from a range of species that have equivalents represented in the fossil record will be constructed.

Fossil isotope data will be contextualised using the vast available published global and local palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental data.

Migratory responses to climate fluctuations across the Pleistocene, implications for current understanding of the palaeoenvironment and palaeoecology, and threats to the Serengeti Migration under future climate change scenarios will be explored.