Diet provides critical information about the ecology and environment of herbivores. Hence, understanding the dietary strategies of fossil herbivores and the associated temporal changes is one aspect of inferring paleoenvironmental conditions. Here, we present carbon isotope data from more than 1,050 fossil teeth that record the dietary patterns of nine herbivore families in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene (3.6 to 1.05 Ma) from the Shungura Formation, a hominin-bearing site in southwestern Ethiopia. An increasing trend toward C4herbivory has been observed with attendant reductions in the proportions of browsers and mixed feeders through time. A high proportion of mixed feeders has been observed prior to 2.9 Ma followed by a decrease in the proportion of mixed feeders and an increase in grazers between 2.7 and 1.9 Ma, and a further increase in the proportion of grazers after 1.9 Ma. The collective herbivore fauna shows two major change points in carbon isotope values at ∼2.7 and ∼2.0 Ma. While hominin fossils from the sequence older than 2.7 Ma are attributed to
Haasgat is a primate-rich fossil locality in the northeastern part of the Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here we report the first hominin identified from Haasgat, a partial maxillary molar (HGT 500), that was recovered from an
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10016518
- Publisher / Repository:
- PeerJ
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PeerJ
- Volume:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2167-8359
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e2024
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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