Plio-Pleistocene Carnivora of eastern Africa: species richness and turnover patterns

Abstract

This paper presents an up‐to‐date and detailed overview of the Plio‐Pleistocene fossil record of Carnivora in eastern Africa. Major events in the carnivoran lineages present in the region are discussed and stratigraphic ranges of all species‐level taxa are provided. The compiled data are used for quantitative analyses of species richness and turnover. Sampling is considered to be adequate for the interval 3.6–1.5 Mya, and poorer in the half‐million‐year time slices before and after this interval. Species richness peaks around 3.6–3.0 Mya and declines gradually from that time until the end of the time period analysed. Calculation of origination and extinction rates indicate that there are two peaks of origination: at 3.9–3.3 Mya (although the earlier half of this interval is biased through poor sampling) and at 2.1–1.8 Mya. The origination rate is zero in the interval 3.0–2.4 Mya. The extinction rate peaks at around 3.0 Mya after which it falls slightly, remaining nearly constant until 1.8 Mya, after which it increases considerably. The data support the hypothesis that the modern carnivoran guild of eastern Africa originated relatively recently, mostly within the last million years. There is no support in these data for a turnover pulse in Carnivora between 3 and 2 Mya. © 2005 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2005, 144, 121–144.

Villafranchian large mammals from the Iberian Peninsula: paleobiogeography, paleoecology and dispersal events

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Climate change and faunal turnover: testing the mechanics of the turnover-pulse hypothesis with South African fossil data

“…The TPH has also stimulated debate over the role of climate change in human evolution (Behrensmeyer et al 1997;Reed 1997;Potts 1998;Bobe et al 2002;Bobe and Behrensmeyer 2004;DeMenocal 2004;Behrensmeyer 2006), in part because of Vrba's (1988Vrba's ( , 1995Vrba's ( , 1999 proposal that global cooling between 2.8 and 2.5 Ma contributed to a major turnover pulse in African mammals, which included the originations of the hominin genera Homo and Paranthropus. This has been questioned because empirical evidence from compiled species first and last appearances fails to show marked turnover during this interval (Behrensmeyer et al 1997;Bobe et al 2002;Werdelin and Lewis 2005;Frost 2007) and also because insufficient chronological resolution and unequal sampling often confounds attempts to correlate turnover with climate change (Hill 1987;McKee 2001).…”

“…With regard to the TPH, debate has centered on the extent to which late Cenozoic faunal turnover occurs in a piecemeal fashion or as synchronized pulses during episodes of pronounced climate change (Behrensmeyer et al 1997;Reed 1997;McKee 2001;Barry et al 2002;Bobe et al 2002;Bobe and Behrensmeyer 2004;DeMenocal 2004;Werdelin and Lewis 2005;Behrensmeyer 2006;van Dam et al 2006;Frost 2007). The TPH has also stimulated debate over the role of climate change in human evolution (Behrensmeyer et al 1997;Reed 1997;Potts 1998;Bobe et al 2002;Bobe and Behrensmeyer 2004;DeMenocal 2004;Behrensmeyer 2006), in part because of Vrba's (1988Vrba's ( , 1995Vrba's ( , 1999 proposal that global cooling between 2.8 and 2.5 Ma contributed to a major turnover pulse in African mammals, which included the originations of the hominin genera Homo and Paranthropus.…”

Stratigraphic Changes in the Pliocene Carnivoran Assemblage from Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, Idaho

“…Species richness in the carnivoran assemblage from HAFO is relatively constant through intervals of varying temperature and levels of aridity, until the sharp increase in temperature near the top of the section where the assemblage becomes more speciose. The study of Pliocene and Pleistocene carnivorans from east Africa documents the highest species diversity during an interval from 3.3 to 3.0 Ma [17]; this range that corresponds to the age of the sediments containing the spike of carnivoran richness at HAFO.…”