ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Neogene biomarker record of vegetation change in eastern Africa.
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 19 papers.
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19 citing papers in PubMed.
- The origin and development of the Miocene northwest African savanna.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Lower speciation, not higher extinction, drove African megaherbivore diversity collapse.Nature communications · 2026Article
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- Sequential diversification with Miocene extinction and Pliocene speciation linked to mountain uplift explains the diversity of the African rain forest clade Monodoreae (Annonaceae).Annals of botany · 2024Article
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- Langebaanweg's sabertooth guild reveals an African Pliocene evolutionary hotspot for sabertooths (Carnivora; Felidae).iScience · 2023Article
- Palaeobotanical evidence reveals the living conditions of Miocene Lufengpithecus in East Asia.BMC plant biology · 2023Article
- Microclimate shapes the phylosymbiosis of rodent gut microbiota in Jordan's Great Rift Valley.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Miocene Climate and Habitat Change Drove Diversification in Bicyclus, Africa's Largest Radiation of Satyrine Butterflies.Systematic biology · 2022Article
- Intrataxonomic trends in herbivore enamel δNature ecology & evolution · 2021Article
- Tectonics, climate and the diversification of the tropical African terrestrial flora and fauna.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2021Article
- Savanna tree evolutionary ages inform the reconstruction of the paleoenvironment of our hominin ancestors.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Early hominins evolved within non-analog ecosystems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Soil and plant phytoliths from thePeerJ · 2019Article
- Opposite macroevolutionary responses to environmental changes in grasses and insects during the Neogene grassland expansion.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Distinctions in heterotrophic and autotrophic-based metabolism as recorded in the hydrogen and carbon isotope ratios of normal alkanes.Oecologia · 2018Article
- Aridity and hominin environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Mio-Pliocene aridity in the south-central Andes associated with Southern Hemisphere cold periods.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Issues in human evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
The evolution of C4 grassland ecosystems in eastern Africa has been intensely studied because of the potential influence of vegetation on mammalian evolution, including that of our own lineage, hominins. Although a handful of sparse vegetation records exists from middle and early Miocene terrestrial fossil sites, there is no comprehensive record of vegetation through the Neogene. Here we present a vegetation record spanning the Neogene and Quaternary Periods that documents the appearance and subsequent expansion of C4 grasslands in eastern Africa. Carbon isotope ratios from terrestrial plant wax biomarkers deposited in marine sediments indicate constant C3 vegetation from ∼24 Ma to 10 Ma, when C4 grasses first appeared. From this time forward, C4 vegetation increases monotonically to present, with a coherent signal between marine core sites located in the Somali Basin and the Red Sea. The response of mammalian herbivores to the appearance of C4 grasses at 10 Ma is immediate, as evidenced from existing records of mammalian diets from isotopic analyses of tooth enamel. The expansion of C4 vegetation in eastern Africa is broadly mirrored by increasing proportions of C4-based foods in hominin diets, beginning at 3.8 Ma in Australopithecus and, slightly later, Kenyanthropus This continues into the late Pleistocene in Paranthropus, whereas Homo maintains a flexible diet. The biomarker vegetation record suggests the increase in open, C4 grassland ecosystems over the last 10 Ma may have operated as a selection pressure for traits and behaviors in Homo such as bipedalism, flexible diets, and complex social structure.
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