Word: sahel
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...that diverged from that of chimps, our closest living relatives. Even more surprising, this ancient hominid was not discovered anywhere near the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where all the record setters of the past three decades have been found. Instead, it turned up in the sub-Saharan Sahel region of Chad, more than 1,500 miles to the west, forcing a rethinking of the conventional wisdom about where humans arose...
...already beleaguered notion that our ancestors first emerged on a treeless savanna. It now looks as though this pivotal event happened in a setting that was at least partly wooded. Most remarkable of all, though, is the skull itself. The creature, known formally as Sahelanthropus tchadensis (roughly translated "Sahel hominid from Chad") and informally as Toumai ("hope of life," in the local Goran language), has a mix of apelike and hominid features. And to some paleontologists, the hominid features, especially the face, are a lot more modern-looking than anyone would have expected at so early an evolutionary stage...
...praise his "fast-track acquisition and resettlement program" - his policy of expropriating white-owned farms. In Zimbabwe the opposition Movement for Democratic Change accused Mugabe of being a "world-class hypocrite." Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi blocked an attempt by Mugabe to hold talks with Italian leaders. NIGERIA Hot Sahel More than 60 people died as a result of a heat wave in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, and the actual death toll could be even higher because many families in remote areas fail to register their dead before burying them within the 24-hour period customary for Muslims. Seasonal...
...were to turn out to be identical to those of the past century, the damage inflicted would be far worse. To appreciate what happens when vegetative cover is removed, one need look no further than the 1930s Dust Bowl in the U.S. and the 1970s famine in Africa's Sahel. In both cases, a meteorological drought was exacerbated by agricultural and pastoral practices that stripped land bare, exposing it to the not so tender mercies of sun and wind...
...even though nobody has a handle on the underlying dynamics, the link between far-flung weather patterns and the North American hurricane season appears solid. Indeed, for the past 12 years, Gray has routinely used El Nino, Sahel rainfall and other factors to make impressively accurate predictions. Last October he forecast 12 major tropical storms for 1995, and in early August he upped the number to 16, just five storms shy of the record set in 1933 and more than double the number in 1994. "People thought we'd gone crazy," says Gray. "Now it appears we probably undershot...