Last week, a number of friends, my family, and I had the pleasure of visiting the Shaumari Wildlife Reserve, and sometime before that the Azraq Wetland Reserve.Two observations I wish to highlight on the basis of the two visits. The first relates to the network of roads in the area, and the second to the two reserves themselves and other reserves and protected areas throughout
Last week, a number of friends, my family, and I had the pleasure of visiting the Shaumari Wildlife Reserve, and sometime before that the Azraq Wetland Reserve.Two observations I wish to highlight on the basis of the two visits. The first relates to the network of roads in the area, and the second to the two reserves themselves and other reserves and protected areas throughout
Recent evidence suggests Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa and through the Levant during the late Middle Pleistocene to early Late Pleistocene. This window coincides with fluctuating climatic conditions over the Levant associated with glacial/interglacial cycles, including increasingly hot and dry conditions over the Middle to Late Pleistocene transition. Inland palaeohydrological features, such as the Azraq Wetlands of northeast Jordan, across the region would have been crucial to hominin survival during this time, providing concentrated freshwater and biotic resources. This thesis aims to establish the palaeoecological context of the Shishan Marsh, in the southern Azraq Wetlands, over the late Middle Pleistocene to early Late Pleistocene (~300-110ka) using biogenic silica microfossils, and considers the implications for early hominins occupying the landscape. Phytoliths, diatoms, and sponge spicules were extracted from 17 bulk sediment samples from the lower layers of five stratig