Fossil Cercopithecidae from the Hadar Formation and surrounding areas of the Afar Depression, Ethiopia

Frost, Stephen R.; Delson, Eric

doi:10.1006/jhev.2002.0603

Cited by 114 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(68 reference statements)

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“…The neck appears short and robust with a neck-shaft angle of 1208. The neck-shaft angle of extant cercopithecid taxa considerably overlaps, but this value is close to the average of arboreal Cercopithecus, Colobus, Presbytis and Nasalis (Frost and Delson, 2002). The neck is thick in comparison to the presumed BM (Fig.…”

Section: Comparative Datamentioning

confidence: 83%

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Earliest colobine skeletons from Nakali, Kenya

Nakatsukasa

Mbua

Sawada

et al. 2010

American J Phys Anthropol

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Old World monkeys represent one of the most successful adaptive radiations of modern primates, but a sparse fossil record has limited our knowledge about the early evolution of this clade. We report the discovery of two partial skeletons of an early colobine monkey (Microcolobus) from the Nakali Formation (9.8-9.9 Ma) in Kenya that share postcranial synapomorphies with extant colobines in relation to arboreality such as mediolaterally wide distal humeral joint, globular humeral capitulum, distinctly angled zona conoidea, reduced medial trochlear keel, long medial epicondyle with weak retroflexion, narrow and tall olecranon, posteriorly dislocated fovea on the radial head, low projection of the femoral greater trochanter, wide talar head with a greater rotation, and proximodistally short cuboid and ectocuneiform. Microcolobus in Nakali clearly differs from the stem cercopithecoid Victoriapithecus regarding these features, as Victoriapithecus is postcranially similar to extant small-sized terrestrial cercopithecines. However, degeneration of the thumb, a hallmark of modern colobines, is not observed, suggesting that this was a late event in colobine evolution. This discovery contradicts the prevailing hypothesis that the forest invasion by cercopithecids first occurred in the Plio-Pleistocene, and shows that this event occurred by the late Miocene at a time when ape diversity declined.

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Section: Comparative Datamentioning

confidence: 83%

“…The greater trocanter exceeds only slightly the femoral head. The height index (Frost and Delson, 2002) is very low and close to the average of Piliocolobus among the examined taxa (Appendix). The femoral head is 13.5 mm in SI diameter.…”

Section: Comparative Datamentioning

confidence: 89%

Earliest colobine skeletons from Nakali, Kenya

Nakatsukasa

Mbua

Sawada

et al. 2010

American J Phys Anthropol

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“…Recovery of hominin fossils through the entire stratigraphic range suggests no marked preference by A. afarensis for any single biome, including forest. Significant cooling and biome change had no obvious effect on the presence of this species through the sequence, a pattern of persistence shared by other Pliocene mammal taxa at Hadar and elsewhere (6,27,32). We hypothesize that A. afarensis was able to accommodate to periods of directional cooling, climate stability, and high variability.…”

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confidence: 83%

High-resolution vegetation and climate change associated with Pliocene Australopithecus afarensis

Bonnefille

Potts

Chalié

et al. 2004

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

203

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Plio-Pleistocene global climate change is believed to have had an important influence on local habitats and early human evolution in Africa. Responses of hominin lineages to climate change have been difficult to test, however, because this procedure requires well documented evidence for connections between global climate and hominin environment. Through high-resolution pollen data from Hadar, Ethiopia, we show that the hominin Australopithecus afarensis accommodated to substantial environmental variability between 3.4 and 2.9 million years ago. A large biome shift, up to 5°C cooling, and a 200-to 300-mm͞yr rainfall increase occurred just before 3.3 million years ago, which is consistent with a global marine ␦ 18 O isotopic shift.

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“…Among papionins, adaptations to terrestrial behavior were already apparent by the late Miocene (52), and all evidence suggests that the earliest Theropithecus was fully terrestrial (10,36,53,54). The main morphological changes that occurred in Theropithecus 3.8-1.0 Ma include increasing body size and the dentognathic specialization for grazing (36,53,55), but the evidence for C 4 -dominated diets among the earliest Theropithecus fossils indicates that the grazing behavior precedes most of the dental specializations for eating grass, although we recognize that Theropithecus' initial use of C 4 grass may have focused on the nonblade part of grass.…”

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confidence: 99%

Dietary change among hominins and cercopithecids in Ethiopia during the early Pliocene

Levin

Haile‐Selassie

Frost

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The incorporation of C4 resources into hominin diet signifies increased dietary breadth within hominins and divergence from the dietary patterns of other great apes. Morphological evidence indicates that hominin diet became increasingly diverse by 4.2 million years ago but may not have included large proportions of C4 foods until 800 thousand years later, given the available isotopic evidence. Here we use carbon isotope data from early to mid Pliocene hominin and cercopithecid fossils from Woranso-Mille (central Afar, Ethiopia) to constrain the timing of this dietary change and its ecological context. We show that both hominins and some papionins expanded their diets to include C4 resources as early as 3.76 Ma. Among hominins, this dietary expansion postdates the major dentognathic morphological changes that distinguish Australopithecus from Ardipithecus, but it occurs amid a continuum of adaptations to diets of tougher, harder foods and to committed terrestrial bipedality. In contrast, carbon isotope data from cercopithecids indicate that C4-dominated diets of the earliest members of the Theropithecus oswaldi lineage preceded the dental specialization for grazing but occurred after they were fully terrestrial. The combined data indicate that the inclusion of C4 foods in hominin diet occurred as part of broader ecological changes in African primate communities.

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Fossil Cercopithecidae from the Hadar Formation and surrounding areas of the Afar Depression, Ethiopia

Cited by 114 publications

References 31 publications

Earliest colobine skeletons from Nakali, Kenya

Earliest colobine skeletons from Nakali, Kenya

High-resolution vegetation and climate change associated with Pliocene Australopithecus afarensis

Dietary change among hominins and cercopithecids in Ethiopia during the early Pliocene

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