Dietary trends in herbivores from the Shungura Formation, southwestern Ethiopia.

Autor: Negash EW; Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052; enquyen@gwu.edu., Alemseged Z; Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637., Bobe R; School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6PE, United Kingdom.; Gorongosa National Park, Sofala, Mozambique., Grine F; Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794., Sponheimer M; Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80302., Wynn JG; Division of Earth Sciences, National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA 22314.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A] 2020 Sep 08; Vol. 117 (36), pp. 21921-21927. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Aug 24.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2006982117
Abstrakt: Diet provides critical information about the ecology and environment of herbivores. Hence, understanding the dietary strategies of fossil herbivores and the associated temporal changes is one aspect of inferring paleoenvironmental conditions. Here, we present carbon isotope data from more than 1,050 fossil teeth that record the dietary patterns of nine herbivore families in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene (3.6 to 1.05 Ma) from the Shungura Formation, a hominin-bearing site in southwestern Ethiopia. An increasing trend toward C 4 herbivory has been observed with attendant reductions in the proportions of browsers and mixed feeders through time. A high proportion of mixed feeders has been observed prior to 2.9 Ma followed by a decrease in the proportion of mixed feeders and an increase in grazers between 2.7 and 1.9 Ma, and a further increase in the proportion of grazers after 1.9 Ma. The collective herbivore fauna shows two major change points in carbon isotope values at ∼2.7 and ∼2.0 Ma. While hominin fossils from the sequence older than 2.7 Ma are attributed to Australopithecus , the shift at ∼2.7 Ma indicating the expansion of C 4 grasses on the landscape was concurrent with the first appearance of Paranthropus The link between the increased C 4 herbivory and more open landscapes suggests that Australopithecus lived in more wooded landscapes compared to later hominins such as Paranthropus and Homo , and has implications for key morphological and behavioral adaptations in our lineage.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.
Databáze: MEDLINE
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