7 Dental Microwear and Paleoecology

Abstract

The paleoecology of early hominin species is more than simply reconstructing the habitats in which they existed.Ultimately we would like to know the ecological context before and after speciation and extinction events, and about the interactions of hominins with their environment, including other species.A first step toward this goal is to discover as much information as possible regarding the climate, geomorphology, vegetation physiognomy (habitat structure), and the faunal community.These factors build on one another such that climate, soil properties, and geomorphology are responsible for the vegetation, which, in turn, plays a fundamental role in controlling what other life forms can be supported.An understanding of extant African habitats is necessary to reconstruct ancient vegetation physiognomy for early Pliocene hominins.An appreciation of living mammals is also important in interpreting Pliocene environments when using faunal techniques.The most common data recovered with early hominins are other mammalian fossils, and these are targeted here for explaining how reconstructions of habitat and community ecology can be approached.Faunal analyses can be compared with other types of research such as palynology, fossil botanical studies, and isotopic analyses of soils and teeth to arrive at a better understanding of hominin paleoecology.Fossil mammals found within the same deposits as early hominins can be used to answer a variety of questions relating to evolutionary paleoecology.First, fossil

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