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Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem
BACKGROUND: Major biological and cultural innovations in late Pliocene hominin evolution are frequently linked to the spread or fluctuating presence of C(4) grass in African ecosystems. Whereas the deep sea record of global climatic change provides indirect evidence for an increase in C(4) vegetatio...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2009
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746317/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19844568 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007199 |
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author | Plummer, Thomas W. Ditchfield, Peter W. Bishop, Laura C. Kingston, John D. Ferraro, Joseph V. Braun, David R. Hertel, Fritz Potts, Richard |
author_facet | Plummer, Thomas W. Ditchfield, Peter W. Bishop, Laura C. Kingston, John D. Ferraro, Joseph V. Braun, David R. Hertel, Fritz Potts, Richard |
author_sort | Plummer, Thomas W. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Major biological and cultural innovations in late Pliocene hominin evolution are frequently linked to the spread or fluctuating presence of C(4) grass in African ecosystems. Whereas the deep sea record of global climatic change provides indirect evidence for an increase in C(4) vegetation with a shift towards a cooler, drier and more variable global climatic regime beginning approximately 3 million years ago (Ma), evidence for grassland-dominated ecosystems in continental Africa and hominin activities within such ecosystems have been lacking. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We report stable isotopic analyses of pedogenic carbonates and ungulate enamel, as well as faunal data from ∼2.0 Ma archeological occurrences at Kanjera South, Kenya. These document repeated hominin activities within a grassland-dominated ecosystem. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These data demonstrate what hitherto had been speculated based on indirect evidence: that grassland-dominated ecosystems did in fact exist during the Plio-Pleistocene, and that early Homo was active in open settings. Comparison with other Oldowan occurrences indicates that by 2.0 Ma hominins, almost certainly of the genus Homo, used a broad spectrum of habitats in East Africa, from open grassland to riparian forest. This strongly contrasts with the habitat usage of Australopithecus, and may signal an important shift in hominin landscape usage. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2746317 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2009 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-27463172009-10-21 Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem Plummer, Thomas W. Ditchfield, Peter W. Bishop, Laura C. Kingston, John D. Ferraro, Joseph V. Braun, David R. Hertel, Fritz Potts, Richard PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Major biological and cultural innovations in late Pliocene hominin evolution are frequently linked to the spread or fluctuating presence of C(4) grass in African ecosystems. Whereas the deep sea record of global climatic change provides indirect evidence for an increase in C(4) vegetation with a shift towards a cooler, drier and more variable global climatic regime beginning approximately 3 million years ago (Ma), evidence for grassland-dominated ecosystems in continental Africa and hominin activities within such ecosystems have been lacking. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We report stable isotopic analyses of pedogenic carbonates and ungulate enamel, as well as faunal data from ∼2.0 Ma archeological occurrences at Kanjera South, Kenya. These document repeated hominin activities within a grassland-dominated ecosystem. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These data demonstrate what hitherto had been speculated based on indirect evidence: that grassland-dominated ecosystems did in fact exist during the Plio-Pleistocene, and that early Homo was active in open settings. Comparison with other Oldowan occurrences indicates that by 2.0 Ma hominins, almost certainly of the genus Homo, used a broad spectrum of habitats in East Africa, from open grassland to riparian forest. This strongly contrasts with the habitat usage of Australopithecus, and may signal an important shift in hominin landscape usage. Public Library of Science 2009-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC2746317/ /pubmed/19844568 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007199 Text en Plummer et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Plummer, Thomas W. Ditchfield, Peter W. Bishop, Laura C. Kingston, John D. Ferraro, Joseph V. Braun, David R. Hertel, Fritz Potts, Richard Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem |
title | Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem |
title_full | Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem |
title_fullStr | Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem |
title_full_unstemmed | Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem |
title_short | Oldest Evidence of Toolmaking Hominins in a Grassland-Dominated Ecosystem |
title_sort | oldest evidence of toolmaking hominins in a grassland-dominated ecosystem |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746317/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19844568 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007199 |
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