Hominid paleoecology at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania as indicated by antelope remains

Stable isotopes of pedogenic carbonates as indicators of paleoecology in the Plio-Pleistocene (upper Bed I), western margin of the Olduvai Basin, Tanzania

“…Nonetheless, the present study is in broad agreement with reconstructions based on the excavated large and small mammal assemblages, which conclude that a higher proportion of intermediate and closed habitats were present during Bed I than in the area today (Plummer and Bishop, 1994;Kappelman et al, 1997;Fernández-Jalvo et al, 1998;Andrews and Humphrey, 1999;Bishop, 1999;Denys, 1999;Plummer et al, 1999). Between Tuffs IB and IC, interpretations of site-specific data from FLK-NN (levels 1, 2, and 3) and FLK-Zinjanthropus indicate the presence of dense canopy woodland based on the micromammal assemblages (Fernández-Jalvo et al, 1998;Andrews and Humphrey, 1999) and closed habitats based on bo vid ecomorphology (Plummer and Bishop, 1994). By implication, these data indicate the climate during portions of Bed I time was moister than today.…”

Connecting local environmental sequences to global climate patterns: evidence from the hominin-bearing Hadar Formation, Ethiopia

“…Although "taxon-free" methods, such as stable carbon isotope analysis of fossil tooth enamel or ecological functional morphology (ecomorphology), have become increasingly popular and useful in reconstructing hominid paleoenvironments, the Hadar paleontological assemblage has yet to be systematically analyzed by these methods. While this study relies on the concept of uniformitarianism, other studies directly comparing carbon isotope or ecomorphology results to AAC values have identified similar overall trends in paleoenvironmental communities between the methods (e.g., Plummer and Bishop, 1994;Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp, 2003). Cluster and correspondence analysis (CA) were performed using the program MVSP (Multi-Variate Statistical Package v.3.13: Kovach Computing Services, 2002) to identify similarity or differences between submember bovid assemblages and to understand the controlling factors of the patterns observed.…”

Bovid ecomorphology and hominin paleoenvironments of the Shungura Formation, lower Omo River Valley, Ethiopia

“…Our past models (e.g., Plummer and Bishop, 1994;Plummer et al, 2008;Bishop et al, 2011, and the models of other researchers (e.g., Kappelman et al, 1997;DeGusta and Vrba, 2003) conflate bovids preferring wetlands with those preferring woodlands within the heavy cover category. At many paleontological sites, where wetlands can be effectively ruled out by sedimentological analysis or other proxies, this is probably not a problem.…”

“…The variables used are those that best discriminate between the groups to which specimens ultimately will be assigned. As in our previous work (e.g., Plummer and Bishop, 1994;Plummer et al, 2008;Bishop et al, 2011) we used quadratic, rather than linear, discriminant function analysis. In linear DFA, identical within-group covariance matrices are pooled to calculate a linear discriminant function .…”

“…Relative abundance of fossil astragali assigned to different habitat preferences (relative ecomorph abundance) can, subject to taphonomic analysis, be used as a proxy for the relative abundance of the types of preferred vegetation cover, allowing us to infer their prevalence regionally during the stratigraphic interval of deposition (Kappelman, 1988;Plummer and Bishop, 1994;Kappelman et al, 1997;Kovarovic and Andrews, 2007;Bishop et al, 2011).…”