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Science 10 February 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5762, p. 821
DOI: 10.1126/science.1120161
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Brevia

The Age of the Sahara Desert

Mathieu Schuster,1,2* Philippe Duringer,2 Jean-François Ghienne,2 Patrick Vignaud,3 Hassan Taisso Mackaye,4 Andossa Likius,4 Michel Brunet3

In the Sahara region, the age of onset of the desert condition has been uncertain until now. Here we report on the discovery of 7,000,000-year-old eolian dune deposits from the northern Chad Basin. This geological archive is the oldest known evidence for desert occurrence in the Sahara.

1 Université Bretagne Occidentale, Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer, Domaines Océaniques, CNRS Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR) 6538, 1 place Nicolas Copernic, 29280 Plouzané, France.
2 Université Louis Pasteur, Ecole et Observatoire de Sciences de la Terre, Centre de Géochimie de la Surface, CNRS UMR 7517, 67084 Strasbourg, France.
3 Université de Poitiers, Laboratoire de Géobiologie, Biochronologie et Paléontologie Humaine, CNRS UMR 6046, 86022 Poitiers, France.
4 Département de Paléontologie, Université de N'Djaména, Boite Postale 1117, N'Djaména, Chad.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: schuster{at}univ-brest.fr

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Cosmogenic nuclide dating of Sahelanthropus tchadensis and Australopithecus bahrelghazali: Mio-Pliocene hominids from Chad.
A.-E. Lebatard, D. L. Bourles, P. Duringer, M. Jolivet, R. Braucher, J. Carcaillet, M. Schuster, N. Arnaud, P. Monie, F. Lihoreau, et al. (2008)
PNAS 105, 3226-3231
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