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Updated: Feb 27, 2026

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Aridity and hominin environments.

Scott A Blumenthal1, Naomi E Levin2, Francis H Brown3

  • 1Research Laboratory for Archaeology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom; scott.blumenthal@arch.ox.ac.uk.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|June 28, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Paleoclimate reconstructions in eastern Africa reveal no long-term aridification trend. This suggests that shifts in C4 grass and herbivore populations were not driven by increasing aridity, challenging long-held hypotheses on hominin evolution.

Keywords:
Africahuman evolutionmammalsoxygen isotopesterrestrial paleoclimate

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Area of Science:

  • Paleoclimatology
  • Paleoecology
  • Paleoanthropology

Background:

  • Aridification is a proposed driver of ecological and hominin evolution in Plio-Pleistocene eastern Africa.
  • Reconstructing terrestrial paleoclimate has historically been challenging, limiting hypothesis testing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop and apply a new method for quantifying terrestrial water deficit (WD) over the past 4.4 million years.
  • To test the hypothesis that aridification influenced ecological and evolutionary changes in eastern Africa.

Main Methods:

  • Developed a revised aridity index using tooth enamel oxygen isotope (δ18O) values.
  • Applied the index to fossil collections from eastern Africa spanning 4.4 million years.

Main Results:

  • No significant long-term trend in water deficit (WD) was detected.
  • Paleoaridity showed no correlation with herbivore paleodiet structure in the studied fossil record.
  • Findings align with other terrestrial climate indicators from the Omo-Turkana Basin.

Conclusions:

  • The long-term aridification hypothesis for Plio-Pleistocene eastern Africa may be inaccurate.
  • Changes in C4 grass and grazer abundance might be decoupled from aridity.
  • Other factors like rainfall seasonality and ecological interactions may be crucial for biome evolution.