ArticleEcology letters2020
Brain expansion in early hominins predicts carnivore extinctions in East Africa.
Article in Ecology letters, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trait-mediated speciation and human-driven extinctions in proboscideans revealed by unsupervised Bayesian neural networks.Science advances · 2024Article
- The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2024Review
- Disruption of trait-environment relationships in African megafauna occurred in the middle Pleistocene.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Early Pleistocene faunivorous hominins were not kleptoparasitic, and this impacted the evolution of human anatomy and socio-ecology.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Contracting eastern African CScientific reports · 2021Article
- Changes in the large carnivore community structure of the Judean Desert in connection to Holocene human settlement dynamics.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Convergent evolution of pain-inducing defensive venom components in spitting cobras.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Ecological Changes, Social Behaviour and Human Intergroup Tolerance 300,000 to 30,000 BP.Journal of archaeological method and theory · 2021Article
- The past and future human impact on mammalian diversity.Science advances · 2020Article
- Iterative evolution of large-bodied hypercarnivory in canids benefits species but not clades.Communications biology · 2020Article
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 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
While the anthropogenic impact on ecosystems today is evident, it remains unclear if the detrimental effect of hominins on co-occurring biodiversity is a recent phenomenon or has also been the pattern for earlier hominin species. We test this using the East African carnivore fossil record. We analyse the diversity of carnivores over the last four million years and investigate whether any decline is related to an increase in hominin cognitive capacity, vegetation changes or climatic changes. We find that extinction rates in large carnivores correlate with increased hominin brain size and with vegetation changes, but not with precipitation or temperature changes. While temporal analyses cannot distinguish between the effects of vegetation changes and hominins, we show through spatial analyses of contemporary carnivores in Africa that only hominin causation is plausible. Our results suggest that substantial anthropogenic influence on biodiversity started millions of years earlier than currently assumed.
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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.