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Understanding and mitigating the e ects of our ongoing biodiversity crisis requires a deep-time perspective on how ecosystems recover in the aftermath of environmental catastrophes. The mass extinction event at the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary (ca. 66 Ma) represents a natural laboratory wherein the tempo and mode of biotic recovery can be studied with high chronostratigraphic resolution. Although the morphological evolution of mammals across this event has been reconstructed from skeletal remains, the exact nature of any changes in dietary preference remains unknown. A primary goal here is to fill this gap by investigating how ecological preferences of mammals, reflected by diet, changed from the Late Cretaceous, when they shared landscapes with dinosaurs, to the earliest Paleogene, when they did not. To accomplish this, carbon and oxygen isotope ratios of fossil tooth enamel (bioapatite) were measured using laserablation mass spectrometry in order to infer animal diet and drinking water sources, which vary depending on the niche occupied by an animal. Fossil teeth were collected from two sites located within 400 meters of one another within the West Bijou Creek field area of the Denver Basin, one 9 meters (~128 ky pre-K/Pg) below the boundary (teeth from ceratopsian and hadrosaurid dinosaurs and the multituberculate mammal Mesodma, as well as gar fish scales), and the other 4 meters (~57 ky post-K/Pg) above (Mesodma teeth and gar fish scales). Carbon isotope ratios (δ13C) of Mesodma tooth enamel vary significantly across the K/Pg boundary, with Late Cretaceous teeth having lower and more variable δ13C (-10.1 to -16.4‰, n=4) and early Paleocene teeth having higher and less variable δ13C (-5.3 to 9.0 ‰, n=5), the latter being similar to values for Late Cretaceous dinosaurs. These results suggest Mesodma had very di erent dietary behaviors following the extinction event, presumably a result of the disappearance of non-avian dinosaurs as well as 57% of North American plants, both of which made new food sources and niches available to them. These results also hint at a decoupling of behavioral change from morphological change, at least in the case of Mesodma, over 10 ky timescales. Isotopic analysis of teeth from other Late Cretaceous and earliest Paleogene mammalian taxa is ongoing and will hopefully allow for more detailed interpretations of ecological change across the K/Pg extinction event in the Denver Basin. 

This paper evaluates risk-oriented frameworks for explaining environmental, social, and economic changes faced by fishing and herding communities in the Turkana Basin during and after the African Humid Period (AHP, 15–5 ka). The orbitally-forced AHP created moist conditions, high lake levels, and unusual hydrological connections across much of northern and eastern Africa. As arid conditions set in and rainfall decreased between 5.3 and 3.9 ka in eastern Africa, Lake Turkana (NW Kenya) shrank dramatically. Shoreline retreat coincided with an expansion of open plains, creating new ecological conditions and potential opportunities for early herders in the basin. In this changing landscape, economies shifted from food procurement (fishing/hunting aquatic resources) to food production (herding), likely through both in-migration by pastoralists and adoption of herding by local fishers. Early pastoralists also built at least seven megalithic pillar sites that served as communal cemeteries during this time. Recent research has shown that local environmental dynamics – both during and after the AHP – were complex, demanding a more careful interrogation of the notion that post-AHP life entailed new and/or heightened risks. Risk-buffering strategies might include mobility, diversification, physical storage, and exchange. Archaeologists working around Lake Turkana have proposed that economic shifts from fishing to pastoralism entailed increased mobility as a risk-buffering strategy to deal with aridity and resource unpredictability, and that pillar sites – as fixed landmarks in an unstable landscape – provided settings for congregation and exchange amongst increasingly mobile herding communities. However, recent research has shown that local environmental dynamics in the Lake Turkana basin – both during and after the AHP – were more complex than previously thought, necessitating re-evaluation of the notion that post-AHP life entailed new and/or heightened risks. Here, we explore risk buffering strategies (e.g. mobility, diversification, physical storage and/or exchange) as only one category of potential explanation for the new social practices observed in the region at this time. Gauging their applicability requires us to (a) assess the spatial mobility of communities and individuals interred at pillar sites; (b) evaluate whether and how mobility strategies may have changed as pastoralism supplanted fishing; and (c) examine alternative explanations for social and economic changes.