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ReportsIsotopic Evidence for Dietary Variability in the Early Hominin Paranthropus robustus
Traditional methods of dietary reconstruction do not allow the investigation of dietary variability within the lifetimes of individual hominins. However, laser ablation stable isotope analysis reveals that the
1 Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. 13C values of Paranthropus robustus individuals often changed seasonally and interannually. These data suggest that Paranthropus was not a dietary specialist and that by about 1.8 million years ago, savanna-based foods such as grasses or sedges or animals eating these foods made up an important but highly variable part of its diet.
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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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)