Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ, 07079, USA.
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, 610 Taylor Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Mar 30;11(1):7164. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-86642-z.
The extinction of the Paranthropus boisei estimated to just before 1 Ma occurred when C grasslands dominated landscapes of the Eastern African Rift System (EARS). P. boisei has been characterized as an herbivorous C specialist, and paradoxically, its demise coincided with habitats favorable to its dietary ecology. Here we report new pedogenic carbonate stable carbon (δC) and oxygen (δO) values (nodules = 53, analyses = 95) from an under-sampled interval (1.4-0.7 Ma) in the Turkana Basin (Kenya), one of the most fossiliferous locales of P. boisei. We combined our new results with published δC values from the EARS dated to 3-0 Ma, conducted time-series analysis of woody cover (ƒ), and compared the EARS ƒ trends to regional and global paleo-environmental and -climatic datasets. Our results demonstrate that the long-term rise of C grasslands was punctuated by a transient but significant increase in C vegetation and warmer temperatures, coincident with the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (1.3-0.7 Ma) and implicating a short-term rise in pCO. The contraction of C grasslands escalated dietary competition amongst the abundant C-feeders, likely influencing P. boisei's demise.
估计在 100 万年前之前，巨猿就已经灭绝了，当时 C 型草原主导了东非裂谷系统（EAR）的景观。巨猿被认为是一种食草的 C 型专食者，但具有讽刺意味的是，它的灭绝与有利于其饮食生态的栖息地同时发生。在这里，我们报告了肯尼亚图尔卡纳盆地（Turkana Basin）一个采样不足的时间段（140-70 万年前）中新的土壤碳酸盐稳定碳（δC）和氧（δO）值（结核= 53，分析= 95），该盆地是巨猿化石最丰富的地方之一。我们将新的研究结果与发表的 300-0 万年前 EARS 的 δC 值相结合，对木本植被覆盖（ƒ）进行了时间序列分析，并将 EARS 的 ƒ 趋势与区域和全球古环境和气候数据集进行了比较。我们的结果表明，C 型草原的长期上升被 C 型植被的短暂但显著增加和温暖的温度所打断，与中更新世过渡期（130-70 万年前）同时发生，暗示了短期 pCO2 的上升。C 型草原的收缩加剧了丰富的 C 型食草动物之间的饮食竞争，这可能影响了巨猿的灭绝。
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