One approach to understanding the context of changes in hominin paleodiets is to examine the paleodiets and paleohabitats of contemporaneous mammalian taxa.
Recent carbon isotopic studies suggest that the middle Pliocene was marked by a major shift in hominin diets, characterized by a significant increase in C
4Â foods inÂ
Australopithecus-grade species, includingÂ
Australopithecus afarensis. To contextualize previous isotopic studies ofÂ
´¡.Ìý²¹´Ú²¹°ù±ð²Ô²õ¾±²õ, a team of scientists employed stable isotopes to examine paleodiets of the mammalian fauna contemporaneous withÂ
´¡.Ìý²¹´Ú²¹°ù±ð²Ô²õ¾±²õ at Hadar, Ethiopia. They used these data to inform our understanding of paleoenvironmental change through the deposition of the Hadar Formation. While the majority of the taxa in the Hadar fauna were C
4grazers, most show little change in the intensity of C
4Â food consumption over the 0.5 million-year interval sampled. Two taxa (equids and bovins) do show increases in C
4Ìýconsumption through the Hadar Formation and into the younger, overlying Busidima Formation. Changes in the distributions of C
4-feeders, C
3-feeders and mixed-C
3/C
4-feeders in the sampled intervals are consistent with evidence of dietary reconstructions based on ecomorphology, and with habitats reconstructed using community structure analyses. Meanwhile,Â
´¡.Ìý²¹´Ú²¹°ù±ð²Ô²õ¾±²õ is one of many mammalian taxa whose C
4Ìýconsumption does not show directional change over the intervals sampled. In combination with a wide range of carbon and oxygen isotopic composition forÂ
´¡.Ìý²¹´Ú²¹°ù±ð²Ô²õ¾±²õ as compared to the other large mammal taxa, these results suggest that the C
3/C
4Â dietary flexibility ofÂ
´¡.Ìý²¹´Ú²¹°ù±ð²Ô²õ¾±²õ was relatively unusual among most of its mammalian cohort.
Dietary flexibility of Australopithecus afarensis in the face of paleoecological change during the middle Pliocene: Faunal evidence from Hadar, Ethiopia
Jonathan G. Wynn, Kaye E. Reed, Matt Sponheimer, William H. Kimbel, Zeresenay Alemseged, Zelalem K. Bedaso, Christopher J. Campisano
DOI:
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