Hominin palaeoecology in Late Pliocene Malawi: First insights from isotopes (¹³C, ¹⁸O) in mammal teeth

2011/03/01 by Hervé Bocherens, Oliver Sandrock, Ottmar Kullmer +1 · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies

paper · pdf · doi:10.4102/sajs.v107i3/4.331

openalex publication_date 2011/03/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22

Abstract

Carbon-13 and oxygen-18 abundances were measured in large mammal skeletal remains (tooth enamel, dentine and bone) from the Chiwondo Beds in Malawi, which were dated by biostratigraphic correlation to ca. 2.5 million years ago. The biologic isotopic patterns, in particular the difference in carbon-13 abundances between grazers and browsers and the difference in oxygen-18 abundances between semi-aquatic and terrestrial herbivores, were preserved in enamel, but not in dentine and bone. The isotopic results obtained from the skeletal remains from the Chiwondo Beds indicate a dominance of savannah habitats with some trees and shrubs. This environment was more arid than the contemporaneous Ndolanya Beds in Tanzania. The present study confirms that robust australopithecines were able to live in relatively arid environments and were not confined to more mesic environments elsewhere in southern Africa.

Citations

• Environmental hypotheses of Pliocene human evolution
• Paranthropus boisei: Fifty years of evidence and analysis
• Early hominid evolution and ecological change through the African Plio-Pleistocene
• Suspending OpenMP Tasks on Asynchronous Events: Extending the Taskwait Construct

Cited by

• Diet preferences and climate inferred from oxygen and carbon isotopes of tooth enamel of Tarbosaurus bataar (Nemegt Formation, Upper Cretaceous, Mongolia)
• Isotopic paleoecology (δ13C, δ18O) of a late Pleistocene vertebrate community from the Brazilian Intertropical Region
• Paranthropus [wikipedia]

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