Isotopic Evidence for Dietary Variability in the Early Hominin Paranthropus robustus

doi:10.1126/science.1133827

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Isotopic Evidence for Dietary Variability in the Early Hominin Paranthropus robustus

Matt Sponheimer,¹ Benjamin H. Passey,² Darryl J. de Ruiter,³ Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg,⁴ Thure E. Cerling,²^,5 Julia A. Lee-Thorp⁶

Traditional methods of dietary reconstruction do not allow theinvestigation of dietary variability within the lifetimes ofindividual hominins. However, laser ablation stable isotopeanalysis reveals that the ${delta}$ ¹³C values of Paranthropus robustusindividuals often changed seasonally and interannually. Thesedata suggest that Paranthropus was not a dietary specialistand that by about 1.8 million years ago, savanna-based foodssuch as grasses or sedges or animals eating these foods madeup an important but highly variable part of its diet.

¹ Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
² Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
³ Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
⁴ Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
⁵ Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
⁶ Department of Archeological Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford BD1 7DP, UK.

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