Habitat Preferences in Early Hominins and the Origin of the Human Lineage

Summary

Early hominins, such as australopithecines, are characterized by bipedality and enlarged posterior teeth. Originally, these traits were thought to be adaptations to an open environment. However, discoveries of older hominins, such as Ardipithecus that were possibly only occasionally bipedal and did not have enlarged teeth, have refocused the origins of early hominins within a much more closed, wooded setting. Even the later australopithecines are currently cast as inhabitants of mosaic environments encompassing some closed habitats. However, research in some localities that clearly sample closed habitats do not yield hominins. The four million-year-old Mursi Formation of southern Ethiopia is a good example: its fauna, and stable isotopes values from mammalian teeth and paleosol carbonates suggest a fairly closed woody cover, more so than in penecontemporaneous localities of the region. Yet, the Mursi Formation has no hominins while the other localities with dryer and more open habitats do, suggesting that early hominins could not occupy exclusively closed habitat and were reliant on resources found in more open settings. This type of habitat was novel and different from those exploited by our closest relatives, the great apes, and might be a defining characteristic at the origins of the human lineage.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20990