STRATIGRAPHY AND MAMMALIAN PALEONTOLOGY OF NEOGENE SITES IN THE MANONGA VALLEY, NORTHERN TANZANIA

In 1990 the Wembere-Manonga Palaeontological Expedition (WMPE) conduct ed preliminary geological and palaeontological research in the Manonga Valley of northern Tanzania. The expedition succeeded in recovering t housands of vertebrate fossils, including over eight hundred taxonomic ally identifiable mammals, from ten different localities. The fossils were preserved in a series of fine-grained calcareous sediments that w ere deposited in an extensive but relatively shallow lake basin. A pre liminary analysis of the fauna indicates that the fossil sites probabl y range in age from late Miocene to late Pliocene (ca.4-6 Ma). The est imated age of the sites in the Manonga Valley, and their close geograp hical proximity to major hominid-bearing localities in northern Tanzan ia, makes them of evident potential significance for research into the earliest stages of human evolution.