ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Dietary options and behavior suggested by plant biomarker evidence in an early human habitat.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Primate carcass ecology in the Urema Rift, Mozambique.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- BiomarkerProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The role of musical pitch in long-distance defensive signaling.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Organic geochemical evidence of human-controlled fires at Acheulean site of Valdocarros II (Spain, 245 kya).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- New site at Olduvai Gorge (AGS, Bed I, 1.84 Mya) widens the range of locations where hominins engaged in butchery.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Layered habitats: An evolutionary model for present-day recreational needs.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Investigating Hydrogen Isotope Variation during Heating ofMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ~ 2 million years ago.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Tracing the spatial imprint of Oldowan technological behaviors: A view from DS (Bed I, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania).PloS one · 2021Article
- Micro-contextual identification of archaeological lipid biomarkers using resin-impregnated sediment slabs.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Microbial biomarkers reveal a hydrothermally active landscape at Olduvai Gorge at the dawn of the Acheulean, 1.7 Ma.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Clarifying relationships between cranial form and function in tapirs, with implications for the dietary ecology of early hominins.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Article
- Isotopic variance among plant lipid homologues correlates with biodiversity patterns of their source communities.PloS one · 2019Article
- Modelling the role of groundwater hydro-refugia in East African hominin evolution and dispersal.Nature communications · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The availability of plants and freshwater shapes the diets and social behavior of chimpanzees, our closest living relative. However, limited evidence about the spatial relationships shared between ancestral human (hominin) remains, edible resources, refuge, and freshwater leaves the influence of local resources on our species' evolution open to debate. Exceptionally well-preserved organic geochemical fossils--biomarkers--preserved in a soil horizon resolve different plant communities at meter scales across a contiguous 25,000 m(2) archaeological land surface at Olduvai Gorge from about 2 Ma. Biomarkers reveal hominins had access to aquatic plants and protective woods in a patchwork landscape, which included a spring-fed wetland near a woodland that both were surrounded by open grassland. Numerous cut-marked animal bones are located within the wooded area, and within meters of wetland vegetation delineated by biomarkers for ferns and sedges. Taken together, plant biomarkers, clustered bone debris, and hominin remains define a clear spatial pattern that places animal butchery amid the refuge of an isolated forest patch and near freshwater with diverse edible resources.
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