ArticleNature2012
Evidence for dietary change but not landscape use in South African early hominins.
Article in Nature, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 113 citations in OpenAlex.
- Global compilation of bioavailable strontium isotope data.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Impact of intermittent lead exposure on hominid brain evolution.Science advances · 2025Article
- Geochemical chronologies in Paranthropus robustus teeth inform habitat and life histories.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Global research progress of gut microbiota and epigenetics: bibliometrics and visualized analysis.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Article
- Changing perspectives on early hominin diets.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Dental data challenge the ubiquitous presence ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Tracing the mobility of a Late Epigravettian (~ 13 ka) male infant from Grotte di Pradis (Northeastern Italian Prealps) at high-temporal resolution.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Fat and Carbohydrate Interact to Potentiate Food Reward in Healthy Weight but Not in Overweight or Obesity.Nutrients · 2021Observational
- Monthly mobility inferred from isoscapes and laser ablation strontium isotope ratios in caprine tooth enamel.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Calcium isotopic ecology of Turkana Basin hominins.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Broad-scale morpho-functional traits of the mandible suggest no hard food adaptation in the hominin lineage.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Calcium isotopic patterns in enamel reflect different nursing behaviors among South African early hominins.Science advances · 2019Article
- Comment on: metals in bones of the middle-aged inhabitants of Sardinia island (Italy) to assess nutrition and environmental exposure [Bocca et al. (2018), Environ Sci Pollut Res].Environmental science and pollution research international · 2018Article
- A two-million-year-long hydroclimatic context for hominin evolution in southeastern Africa.Nature · 2018Article
- The Need to Reassess Dietary Fiber Requirements in Healthy and Critically Ill Patients.Gastroenterology clinics of North America · 2018Review
- Suspected limited mobility of a Middle Pleistocene woman from Southern Italy: strontium isotopes of a human deciduous tooth.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Diet, microorganisms and their metabolites, and colon cancer.Nature reviews. Gastroenterology & hepatology · 2016Review
- Magnesium stable isotope ecology using mammal tooth enamel.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
- Stable isotope-based diet reconstructions of Turkana Basin hominins.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2013Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The dichotomy between early Homo and Paranthropus is justified partly on morphology. In terms of diet, it has been suggested that early Homo was a generalist but that Paranthropus was a specialist. However, this model is challenged and the issue of the resources used by Australopithecus, the presumed common ancestor, is still unclear. Laser ablation profiles of strontium/calcium, barium/calcium and strontium isotope ratios in tooth enamel are a means to decipher intra-individual diet and habitat changes. Here we show that the home range area was of similar size for species of the three hominin genera but that the dietary breadth was much higher in Australopithecus africanus than in Paranthropus robustus and early Homo. We also confirm that P. robustus relied more on plant-based foodstuffs than early Homo. A South African scenario is emerging in which the broad ecological niche of Australopithecus became split, and was then occupied by Paranthropus and early Homo, both consuming a lower diversity of foods than Australopithecus.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.