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Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors

Ideas on hominin evolution have long invoked the emergence from forests into open habitats as generating selection for traits such as bipedalism and dietary shifts. Though controversial, the savanna hypothesis continues to motivate research into the palaeo-environments of Africa. Reconstruction of t...

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Autores principales: Davies, T. Jonathan, Daru, Barnabas H., Bezeng, Bezeng S., Charles-Dominique, Tristan, Hempson, Gareth P., Kabongo, Ronny M., Maurin, Olivier, Muasya, A. Muthama, van der Bank, Michelle, Bond, William J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7381606/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32709951
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69378-0
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author Davies, T. Jonathan
Daru, Barnabas H.
Bezeng, Bezeng S.
Charles-Dominique, Tristan
Hempson, Gareth P.
Kabongo, Ronny M.
Maurin, Olivier
Muasya, A. Muthama
van der Bank, Michelle
Bond, William J.
author_facet Davies, T. Jonathan
Daru, Barnabas H.
Bezeng, Bezeng S.
Charles-Dominique, Tristan
Hempson, Gareth P.
Kabongo, Ronny M.
Maurin, Olivier
Muasya, A. Muthama
van der Bank, Michelle
Bond, William J.
author_sort Davies, T. Jonathan
collection PubMed
description Ideas on hominin evolution have long invoked the emergence from forests into open habitats as generating selection for traits such as bipedalism and dietary shifts. Though controversial, the savanna hypothesis continues to motivate research into the palaeo-environments of Africa. Reconstruction of these ancient environments has depended heavily on carbon isotopic analysis of fossil bones and palaeosols. The sparsity of the fossil record, however, imposes a limit to the strength of inference that can be drawn from such data. Time-calibrated phylogenies offer an additional tool for dating the spread of savanna habitat. Here, using the evolutionary ages of African savanna trees, we suggest an initial tropical or subtropical expansion of savanna between 10 and 15 Ma, which then extended to higher latitudes, reaching southern Africa ca. 3 Ma. Our phylogenetic estimates of the origin and latitudinal spread of savannas broadly correspond with isotopic age estimates and encompass the entire hominin fossil record. Our results are consistent with the savanna hypothesis of early hominin evolution and reignite the debate on the drivers of savanna expansion. Our analysis demonstrates the utility of phylogenetic proxies for dating major ecological transitions in geological time, especially in regions where fossils are rare or absent or occur in discontinuous sediments.
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spelling pubmed-73816062020-07-28 Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors Davies, T. Jonathan Daru, Barnabas H. Bezeng, Bezeng S. Charles-Dominique, Tristan Hempson, Gareth P. Kabongo, Ronny M. Maurin, Olivier Muasya, A. Muthama van der Bank, Michelle Bond, William J. Sci Rep Article Ideas on hominin evolution have long invoked the emergence from forests into open habitats as generating selection for traits such as bipedalism and dietary shifts. Though controversial, the savanna hypothesis continues to motivate research into the palaeo-environments of Africa. Reconstruction of these ancient environments has depended heavily on carbon isotopic analysis of fossil bones and palaeosols. The sparsity of the fossil record, however, imposes a limit to the strength of inference that can be drawn from such data. Time-calibrated phylogenies offer an additional tool for dating the spread of savanna habitat. Here, using the evolutionary ages of African savanna trees, we suggest an initial tropical or subtropical expansion of savanna between 10 and 15 Ma, which then extended to higher latitudes, reaching southern Africa ca. 3 Ma. Our phylogenetic estimates of the origin and latitudinal spread of savannas broadly correspond with isotopic age estimates and encompass the entire hominin fossil record. Our results are consistent with the savanna hypothesis of early hominin evolution and reignite the debate on the drivers of savanna expansion. Our analysis demonstrates the utility of phylogenetic proxies for dating major ecological transitions in geological time, especially in regions where fossils are rare or absent or occur in discontinuous sediments. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-07-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7381606/ /pubmed/32709951 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69378-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Davies, T. Jonathan
Daru, Barnabas H.
Bezeng, Bezeng S.
Charles-Dominique, Tristan
Hempson, Gareth P.
Kabongo, Ronny M.
Maurin, Olivier
Muasya, A. Muthama
van der Bank, Michelle
Bond, William J.
Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors
title Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors
title_full Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors
title_fullStr Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors
title_full_unstemmed Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors
title_short Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors
title_sort savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7381606/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32709951
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69378-0
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