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Science 13 May 1994:
Vol. 264. no. 5161, pp. 955 - 959
DOI: 10.1126/science.264.5161.955
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Articles
Isotopic Evidence for Neogene Hominid Paleoenvironments in the Kenya Rift Valley
John D. Kingston 1,
Andrew Hill 1, and
Bruno D. Marino 2
1 Department of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
2 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Division of Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Bipedality, the definitive characteristic of the earliest hominids, has been regarded as an adaptive response to a transition from forested to more-open habitats in East Africa sometime between 12 million and 5 million years ago. Analyses of the stable carbon isotopic composition ( 13C) of paleosol carbonate and organic matter from the Tugen Hills succession in Kenya indicate that a heterogeneous environment with a mix of C3 and C4 plants has persisted for the last 15.5 million years. Open grasslands at no time dominated this portion of the rift valley. The observed 13C values offer no evidence for a shift from more-closed C3 environments to C4 grassland habitats. If hominids evolved in East Africa during the Late Miocene, they did so in an ecologically diverse setting.
Submitted on December 30, 1993
Accepted on March 31, 1994
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