Aridity and hominin environments

Abstract

Significance Oxygen isotopes in modern and fossil mammals can provide information on climate. In this study, we provide a new record of aridity experienced by early hominins in Africa. We show that past climates were similar to the climate in eastern Africa today, and that early hominins experienced highly variable climates over time. Unexpectedly, our findings suggest that the long-term expansion of grasses and grazing herbivores since the Pliocene, a major ecological transformation thought to drive aspects of hominin evolution, was not coincident with aridification in northern Kenya. This finding raises the possibility that some aspects of hominin environmental variability might have been uncoupled from aridity, and may instead be related to other factors, such as rainfall seasonality or ecological interactions among plants and mammals.

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