Abstract:
:The habitats in which extinct hominids existed has been a key issue in addressing the origin and extinction of early hominids, as well as in understanding various morphological and behavioral adaptations. Many researchers postulated that early hominids lived in an open savanna (Dart, 1925; Robinson, 1963; Howell, 1978). However, Vrba (1985, 1988) has noted that a major global climatic and environmental shift from mesic, closed to xeric, open habitats occurred in the late African Pliocene (approximately 2.5 m.y.a.), thus implying that the earliest hominids existed in these mesic, wooded environs. This climatic shift is also suggested to have contributed to a pulse in speciation events with turnovers of many bovid and possibly hominid species. Previous environmental reconstructions of hominid localities have concentrated on taxonomic identities and taxonomic uniformitarianism to provide habitat reconstructions (e.g., Vrba, 1975; Shipman & Harris, 1988). In addition, relative abundances of species are often used to reconstruct a particular environment, when in fact taphonomic factors could be affecting the proportions of taxa. This study uses the morphological adaptations of mammalian assemblages found with early hominids to reconstruct the habitat based on each species' ecological adaptations, thus minimizing problems introduced by taxonomy and taphonomy. Research presented here compares east and south African Plio-Pleistocene mammalian fossil assemblages with 31 extant mammalian communities from eight different habitat types. All communities are analyzed through ecological diversity methods, that is, each species trophic and locomotor adaptations are used to reconstruct an ecological community and derive its vegetative habitat. Reconstructed habitats show that Australopithecus species existed in fairly wooded, well-watered regions. Paranthropus species lived in similar environs and also in more open regions, but always in habitats that include wetlands. Homo is the first hominid to exist in areas of fairly open, arid grassland. This change from closed to open habitats occurs gradually from about 4 m.y.a. until about 2 m.y.a. when there is a major increase in arid and grazing adapted mammals. Therefore, the appearance of open savannas do not appear to have influenced the origination or adaptations of the earliest hominids, but could have contributed to their demise. As Stanley (1992) hypothesized, Homo species appear the first to be adapted to open, arid environments.
journal_name
J Hum Evoljournal_title
Journal of human evolutionauthors
Reed KEdoi
10.1006/jhev.1996.0106subject
Has Abstractpub_date
1997-02-01 00:00:00pages
289-322issue
2-3eissn
0047-2484issn
1095-8606pii
S0047-2484(96)90106-2journal_volume
32pub_type
杂志文章abstract::In this study we examine the labial and occlusal surfaces of incisors and canines of hominins recovered from the Sima de los Huesos (SH), middle Pleistocene site, in order to establish the possible extra-masticatory use of anterior teeth. We have compared the microwear of these fossils with microwear from the anterior...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.04.007
更新日期:2008-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::By investigating similarity in cranial covariation patterns, it is possible to locate underlying functional and developmental causes for the patterning, and to make inferences about the evolutionary forces that have acted to produce the patterns. Furthermore, establishing where these covariation patterns may diverge i...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.11.001
更新日期:2005-02-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.07.008
更新日期:2013-10-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2020.102853
更新日期:2020-09-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.05.004
更新日期:2020-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::Recent studies point to contact and possible admixture among contemporaneous hominin species during the Plio-Pleistocene. However, detection of hybridization in fossils-and especially fossil hominins-is contentious, and it is hindered in large part by our lack of understanding about how morphological hybridity is mani...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.07.009
更新日期:2006-12-01 00:00:00
abstract::An aeolian sand unit overlies the Middle Stone Age deposits at Blombos Cave on the southern Cape coast. These deposits contained culturally-important artefacts, including bone tools and pieces of engraved ochre, as well as a large number of worked lithics. The aeolian sand and two other remnants of the sand dune forme...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/s0047-2484(03)00048-4
更新日期:2003-05-01 00:00:00
abstract::Studies have reported an empirical link between the size of the semicircular canals and locomotor agility across adult primates. In this paper, we investigate the possibility that this relationship does not follow from the function of the semicircular canals to sense head rotations, but rather reflects spatial constra...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.02.010
更新日期:2008-08-01 00:00:00
abstract::Investigations into the evolution of the primate brain have tended to neglect the role of connectivity in determining which brain structures have changed in size, focusing instead on changes in the size of the whole brain or of individual brain structures, such as the neocortex, in isolation. We show that the primate ...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/s0047-2484(02)00162-8
更新日期:2003-01-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1006/jhev.2001.0492
更新日期:2001-09-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.09.007
更新日期:2009-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::Remains of carnivores from the Sima de los Huesos site representing at least 158 adult individuals of a primitive (i.e., not very speleoid) form of Ursus deningeri Von Reichenau 1906, have been recovered through the 1995 field season. These new finds extend our knowledge of this group in the Sierra de Atapuerca Middle...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1006/jhev.1997.0154
更新日期:1997-08-01 00:00:00
abstract::The evolution of heat treatment for stone artefact production is a subject of major interest for our understanding of early modern humans. In this study, we examine the evidence from one region in Australia to provide a new record of the antiquity of heat treatment, explore chronological shifts in the frequency of hea...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2020.102744
更新日期:2020-05-01 00:00:00
abstract::A human lower right deciduous second molar was discovered in 1984 at the entrance of Trou de l'Abîme at Couvin (Belgium). In subsequent years the interpretation of this fossil remained difficult for various reasons: (1) the lack of taxonomically diagnostic elements which would support its attribution to either Homo (s...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.09.006
更新日期:2010-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::This analysis investigates the ancestry of a single modern human specimen from Australia, WLH-50 (Thorne et al., in preparation; Webb, 1989). Evaluating its ancestry is important to our understanding of modern human origins in Australasia because the prevailing models of human origins make different predictions for th...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1006/jhev.1999.0384
更新日期:2000-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::In view of a decade of progress in ESR dating we have revised the ESR chronology of Border Cave. A detailed gamma ray survey in 1994 and newly calculated beta attenuation data led to total dose rate estimations that are between 0 and 30% smaller than previously estimated. Accordingly, the resulting ESR age estimates a...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1006/jhev.2001.0471
更新日期:2001-06-01 00:00:00
abstract::Strepsirrhine and haplorhine primates exhibit highly derived features of the visual system that distinguish them from most other mammals. Comparative data link the evolution of these visual specializations to the sequential acquisition of nocturnal visual predation in the primate stem lineage and diurnal visual predat...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.09.006
更新日期:2007-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::The greatly diversified locomotor behaviors in the Hominoidea impose different mechanical requirements in the upper limb of each species. As forearm rotation has a major role in locomotion, the skeletal structures involved in this movement may display differences among taxa that reflect functional adaptations. To test...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.08.004
更新日期:2014-11-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.02.005
更新日期:2018-02-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.07.015
更新日期:2017-10-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.08.006
更新日期:2005-12-01 00:00:00
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journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.05.011
更新日期:2017-08-01 00:00:00
abstract::Interpretations of faunal assemblages from the late Miocene Mpesida Beds in the Tugen Hills of the Central Kenyan Rift Valley have figured prominently in discussions of faunal turnover and establishment of the modern East African communities. These faunal changes have important implications for the divergence of the h...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1006/jhev.2001.0503
更新日期:2002-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Recent success in the amplification of ancient DNA (aDNA) from fossil humans has led to calls for further tests to be carried out on similar material. However, there has been little systematic research on the survival of DNA in the fossil record, even though the environment of the fossil is known to be of paramount im...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/s0047-2484(03)00106-4
更新日期:2003-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Interproximal wear facets were examined on hominoid teeth from the middle Miocene site at Paşalar, Turkey. The aim was to find matches between adjacent premolar and molar teeth from single individuals that were collected in the field as isolated teeth and use them to reconstruct tooth rows. These were then used to inv...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2007.08.003
更新日期:2008-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::Studies of the influence of dietary selection pressures in living and extinct primate taxa frequently interpret cranial diversity using a simple lever model. When this model is applied to functional or evolutionary questions, it is commonly assumed that the muscles of mastication vary little in activity during biting ...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1006/jhev.1997.0180
更新日期:1998-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Since body mass covaries with many ecological aspects of an animal, body mass prediction of fossil taxa is a frequent goal of paleontologists. Body mass prediction often relies on a body mass prediction equation (BMPE): a bivariate relationship between a predictor variable (e.g., molar occlusal area, femoral head brea...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.03.001
更新日期:2018-02-01 00:00:00
abstract::Space use in Middle Paleolithic (MP) camps has been suggested as a source of information on the intensity and repetition of occupations and, by extension, of demographics. In the Levant, clear evidence for differential intrasite use and maintenance was important in viewing the late MP Neanderthal sites as base camps i...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2020.102797
更新日期:2020-06-01 00:00:00
abstract::We review the hominin fossil record from western Central Europe in light of the recent major revisions of the geochronological context. The mandible from Mauer (Homo heidelbergensis), dated to circa 500,000 years ago, continues to represent the earliest German hominin and may coincide with the occupation of Europe nor...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 历史文章,杂志文章,评审
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.04.014
更新日期:2006-12-01 00:00:00
abstract::Previous attempts to estimate body mass in pre-Holocene hominins have relied on prediction equations derived from relatively limited extant samples. Here we derive new equations to predict body mass from femoral head breadth and proximal tibial plateau breadth based on a large and diverse sample of modern humans (avoi...
journal_title:Journal of human evolution
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.10.014
更新日期:2018-02-01 00:00:00