wet forests, no KWing ancestors :-)

From: Marc Verhaegen (fa204466_at_skynet.be)
Date: 03/07/05 

Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 20:19:16 +0100

Comptes Rendus Palevol 3:179-189
Early Pliocene Tragulidae and peafowls in the Rift Valley, Kenya: evidence
for rainforest in East Africa
Martin Pickford, Brigitte Senut & Cécile Mourer-Chauviré 2004

The Early Pliocene Mabaget Formation (5.3-4.5 Ma), Tugen Hills, Kenya, has
yielded remains of the African tragulid Hyemoschus aquaticus, which is today
confined to rainforests of West Africa and the Congo Basin as far east as
western Uganda. The same unit has also yielded a peafowl, Pavo sp. The
Mabaget Formation has yielded early hominid fossils variously attributed to
Australopithecus praegens or Ardipithecus ramidus. This sedimentary deposit
joins the list of very early hominid units that preserve evidence of forest
in the vicinity of the basin at the time of deposition. This discovery adds
weight to the suggestion that the earliest hominids inhabited well wooded to
forested regions rather than open country. It now seems more likely that
bipedalism evolved in wooded to forested ecosystems and was, for several
million years, linked to arborealism and that only after it was perfected
did hominids spread into more open environments as fully functional bipeds.
If so, then there is no reason to postulate a quadrupedal 'knuckle-walking'
stage in the evolution of hominids.

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