Re: Early savanna runners


http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/origins/hominid_journey/pot
tsclimate.html

"Our own genus, Homo, was a founding member of the new savanna biota.

:-D

Stone toolmaking and the dental machinery of the robust australopiths
evolved as adaptations oriented to the resources of the drying,
opening landscape, evolutionary events that centered around the global
climatic change 2.4 to 2.5 million years ago.

:-D

(1) Fossilized footprints and skeletal remains suggest that australopiths
had a mixture of bipedal, tree-climbing and probably20 knuckle-walking
features. These would have been ideal for wetlands: bipedalism in waist-deep
water, knuckle-walking in knee-deep water, and grasping fruits and climbing
arms-overhead in the waterside vegetation, as seen today to varying degrees
in pygmy chimpanzees and lowland gorillas in flooded rainforests or forest
swamps15. Australopith short-legged bipedalism was different from human
bipedalism21, probably including a somewhat forward-leaning trunk posture22,
and would have been suitable for aquarborealism. The A. africanus StW-573
foot from Sterkfontein, South Africa, for instance, ³had both bipedal and
climbing adaptations. This skeleton¹s foot morphology is consistent with the
bipedal Laetoli footprints, which are not those of fully human feet, but
which have very clear ape-like morphology²23. Tree-climbing features (which
are less obvious in the robust australopiths) include apelike
upward-directed shoulder joints and curved finger and toe phalanges.

(2) Our tooth microwear studies indicate that A. afarensis molar enamel has
a glossy polished surface that is typical of the molars of capybaras
Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris and mountain-beavers Aplodontia rufa24. Both these
semi-aquatic rodents feed mainly on riverside herbs, grasses and the bark of
young trees. The microwear of Australopithecus boisei displays more pits,
wide parallel striations and deep-recessed occlusal dentine features when
compared to A. afarensis25,26, resembling that of beavers Castor fiber,
which feed on riverine herbs, roots of water-lilies, bark and woody plants.
Apparently, an early australopith diet of fruits (larger front-teeth) and
swamp herbs (polishing) was supplemented with woody plants in the robust
australopiths (more wear). Walker¹s suggestion that A. boisei were
bulk-eaters of ³small, hard fruits with casings, pulp, seeds and all²27
could explain the deep-recessed dentine, but not the heavily polished enamel
that is typical of marsh-plant feeders24,25.
(3-4) These microwear data are consistent with two studies on South-African
australopiths28,29. Sillen provides three possibilities for low
strontium:calcium ratios in A. robustus: partial carnivory; eating leaves
and shoots of forbs and woody plants; and eating food derived from
well-drained streamside soils28. Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp state that A.
africanus ³ate not only fruits and leaves but also large quantities of
carbon-13-enriched foods such as grasses and sedges or animals that ate
these plants, or both²29. However, regular consumption of savannah grasses
is incompatible with the polished, rounded microwear24,29 and predominant
meat eating is unlikely in view of the blunt molars27. More probable is a
diet of sedges and other marshland plants supplemented with fruits and
animals (e.g. tools attributed to A. robustus now suggest termite-eating30).
Independent lines of evidence thus suggest that different australopith
species regularly waded for shallow-water plants, possibly like lowland
gorillas do today15, only much more frequently. Papyrus or reed sedges were
abundant in australopith environments (Table 2) and are part of the diet of
extant hominids. Gorillas eat bamboo shoots and stalks, as well as swamp
herbs and sedges (Table 1); all hominids eat cane; bipedally wading
chimpanzees and humans collect water-lilies; and rice growing in shallow
water and other cereals are staple foods for humans.

.

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