Comment on “Diatomaceous sediments and environmental change in the Pleistocene Olorgesailie Formation, southern Kenya Rift” by R.B. Owen, R. Potts, A.K. Behrensmeyer and P. Ditchfield [Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 269 (2008) 17–37]

Owen et al. [Owen, R.B., Potts, R., Behrensmeyer, A.K., Ditchfield, P., 2008, Diatomaceous sediments and environmental change in the Pleistocene Olorgesailie Formation, southern Kenya Rift Valley. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 269, 17–37], Diatomaceous sediments and environmental change in the Pleistocene Olorgesailie Formation, southern Kenya Rift, Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 269, 17–37) argued that diatom assemblage variations in the Olorgesailie Formation indicate considerable environmental instability with both wetter and drier periods, contradicting the proposed period of lake stability and wet climatic conditions between ca. 1.1 and 0.9 million years ago as proposed by Trauth et al. [Trauth, M.H., Maslin, M.A., Deino, A., Strecker, M.R., 2005. Late Cenozoic moisture history of East Africa. Science 309, 2051–2053., Trauth, M.H., Maslin, M.A., Deino, A., Bergner, A.G.N., Dühnforth, M., Strecker, M.R., 2007. High- and low-latitude forcing of Plio-Pleistocene East African climate and human evolution. Journal of Human Evolution 53, 475–486]. Contrary to the interpretation of our work by Owen et al. [Owen, R.B., Potts, R., Behrensmeyer, A.K., Ditchfield, P., 2008, we never said that the proposed periods of large lakes were characterized by stable conditions.