A study in which researchers analyzed changes in body size, digestive physiology, and dietary strategy of 101 fossil African herbivore communities from a dataset spanning the last 7 million years found that nearly every community prior to 700,000 years ago was ecologically distinct from their contemporary counterparts, indicating that the earliest human ancestors evolved in ecosystems that were markedly different from current ecosystems in Africa.
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Article #19-09284: "Early hominins evolved within non-analog ecosystems," by J. Tyler Faith, John Rowan, and Andrew Du.
MEDIA CONTACT: J. Tyler Faith, University of Utah, UT; tel: 801-558-7333; email: jfaith@nhmu.utah.edu; jtfaith@gmail.com
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences