Trends in Ecology & Evolution
OpinionRethinking the ecological drivers of hominin evolution
Section snippets
Challenges and progress in hominin paleoecology
Hominin paleoecology seeks to understand the relationships between the evolutionary history of fossil hominins and the ecosystems in which they lived. Key questions include: (i) was global-scale climate change a major driving force in hominin diversification? (ii) Did paleoenvironmental dynamics influence hominin morphological and behavioral adaptations? (iii) Were changes in community structure and biotic interactions important in shaping hominin evolution and extinction? Attempts to answer
Confronting an incomplete fossil record
To begin to understand why hominin paleoecology is not providing more informative evolutionary insights, a frank appraisal of the limitations of the hominin fossil record, and their implications for the types of questions we can answer, is warranted. These limitations stem from a hominin fossil record derived from the few places where (i) hominins were present, (ii) their remains were buried in a depositional environment conducive to preservation, (iii) tectonic forces and erosion are currently
Aligning the scales of the questions and the data
A second fundamental challenge involves acknowledging the scales of the research questions and the empirical evidence. The paleoecological data bearing on hominin evolution span a massive range of spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales (Figure 3). Paying attention to these scales is crucial because ecological patterns and processes vary across them [34,35]. For example, if researchers followed a herd of zebras across a grassy floodplain, they would notice that the herd avoids places frequented
Building stronger inferences
A final challenge in hominin paleoecology relates to how we infer causal relationships between ecological and evolutionary change. Conventional strategies often begin with reconstructing paleoecological change through time at a given location (e.g., site, depositional basin, or region) using one or more forms of proxy evidence. These proxies are derived from the paleontological and geological record, and include fossil faunas and plant microfossils (pollen and phytoliths), as well as the
Concluding remarks
Over the past several decades researchers have focused their efforts on reconstructing late Cenozoic paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental changes and fleshing out aspects of hominin evolution that demand explanation. This wealth of data, which is the outcome of efforts by numerous international teams, deserves a research agenda that extends beyond the pattern-matching paradigm that has dominated hominin paleoecology. An expanding body of research is adopting strategies to (i) adapt our analyses
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge our late friend and colleague, Andrew Hill, whose thoughts on 'why study paleoecology?' provided the motivation for this work. We are indebted to the many people and institutions across Africa who have contributed to the evidence that is allowing a new phase of research in understanding hominin evolution. Brian Codding, Kate Fish, Nick Hebdon, Kristen Hawkes, Randy Irmis, Kaedan O'Brien, Jim O'Connell, Andrea Stephens, and two anonymous referees provided helpful feedback on
Declaration of interests
The authors have no interests to declare.
Glossary
- Biomarkers
- molecular fossils (e.g., organic compounds) that are preserved in soils and sedimentary records, and which are indicative of past environments, climates, and fire regimes.
- Depositional basin
- in geology, a region of the Earth's surface where there is net accumulation of sedimentary deposits over time that may also preserve a fossil record.
- Depositional environment
- in geology, the physical environment in which sedimentary rocks are formed (e.g., floodplains, rivers, lakes, oceans) that are
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