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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Fatty Acid 13C Isotopologue Profiling Provides Insight into Trophic Carbon Transfer and Lipid Metabolism of Invertebrate Consumers
Published on: April 17, 2018
Isotopic evidence for dietary variability in the early hominin Paranthropus robustus
Matt Sponheimer1, Benjamin H Passey, Darryl J de Ruiter
1Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
Abstract:
Traditional methods of dietary reconstruction do not allow the investigation of dietary variability within the lifetimes of individual hominins. However, laser ablation stable isotope analysis reveals that the delta13C values of Paranthropus robustus individuals often changed seasonally and interannually. These data suggest that Paranthropus was not a dietary specialist and that by about 1.8 million years ago, savanna-based foods such as grasses or sedges or animals eating these foods made up an important but highly variable part of its diet.
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