Pleistocene Hominid Adaptations

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Punctuated equilibrium

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a very rapid change. Going from Australopithecus to homo.

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Phyletic gradualism

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speciation is slow, uniform, and gradual

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East africa is not just associated with tectonic movements

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it is associated with volcanic activity as well.

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Savanna environments include

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secondary forest, rainforest, swamp forest, woodland, and shrub

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Preferred foods and fall-back foods

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preferred: if food becomes available

fall-back: become critical to survival

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Riverine forest is

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Where there is water on landscape....you will get greater diversity of plants and trees in the wetter part of the landscape.

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Mosaic nature of setting

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combine all of the characteristics of savana.

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Grazers and browzers

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grazers: animals that live in the grassland. Zebras and wildebeests.

browzers: eats lots of different foods. Rhinos.

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Deltas are important because

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they are extremely well-watered areas.

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Refugia

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when animals move into delta spaces for water

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Aquatic plant food

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roots and stems of certain plants are in water. Example: water lilies. Weakness is that it's very hard to identify plant foods.

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Curtis

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pioneered potassium-argon dating and argon-argon dating.

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Primates of the Paleocene

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they have nails rather than claws. Primitive looking primates.
Smell very important because of pronounced snout.
Ability to grasp with curved fingers and toes.
Gradual cooling and first major mammalian radiation.

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Eocene

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more rapid cooling.
Continents are starting to drift apart.
Seasonality at high altitudes.
Changes in animal morphology.
Vision becomes more important than smell.
Lemur-like primitive primates.

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Oligocene

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climate becomes dramatically cool due to expansion of ice sheets in western Antarctic.
Much dryer climate.
First anthropoid primates (monkeys and apes).
First monkeys in south America.
Earliest ape-like fossils found in biome.

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Miocene and primates

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hominoids. Africa was separated from the Indian plate at this time. One could argue that proconcol originated in Africa.

Primates are well represented in miocene with: five digits and curved phalanges

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Begun

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said the apes left Africa than repopulated Africa. Largely being discounted.

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Sahelanthropus tchandensis

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6-7 mya in chad
Foramen magnum positioned to the rear of the skull.
Horizontally oriented basicranium.
Thick supra-orbital Torus.
Long narrow brain case.

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Environmental circumstances

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landscapes; physical features; climate (hot or cold or wet or dry)

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Wet seasons and dry seasons

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found in equatorial Africa during annual seasonality. Some food items might only be available during certain seasons.

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Negative and positive affordances

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negative: In a river bank the crocodile and hippos are negative (costs)

positive: in a river bank the fruits are positive (benefits)

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Ecological niche

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"role" you play on ecosystem.

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Isotopic studies

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certain ways to look at different isotopes. Can tell you about diet and environment.

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We can use cut marked bones as

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markers of movements of hominids.

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What are primates

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generalized: adapted to many different habitats or lifestyles.
Specialized: adapted to a limited habitat or lifestyle.
long period of dependency

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Home range

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biggest areas that chimps move over to. Dry habitats. 80 km.

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Conditions are patchy means

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you have to move over much greater area

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Honing mechanism

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related to sexual dimorphism. Honing is keeping male chimp canine sharp.

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Thin enamel and thick enamel

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thin: when chimps eat soft foods.

thick: when chimps have a more abrasive diet.

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We are what we eat

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this modifies our behavior. Vegetation Modifies our behavior.

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The size of teeth between male and female ardithipecus

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was minimal - showing minimal social aggression.

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Characteristics of ardipithecus

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partially arboreal. Facultative biped. Feminized canine. Woodland omnivore. Toe at right angle.

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Models for pounding tools comes from

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ethnography, primate studies, and experimental archaeology.

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The probing behavior is planned because

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they must have figured out how to probe for bush babies given the landscape in their minds

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Food resources above ground and below ground

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above ground: fruits and nuts and meat.

below ground: tubers and USO and honey and termites...underwater: water lilies and sedges

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"aquatic ape"

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some women like to give birth in water

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Characteristics of Forest, woodland, woodland/grassland, grassland

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forest: closed canopy
forest/woodland: gallery
woodland/grassland: gallery and grasses
grassland: grasses

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Ground water forest

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best model analog of ardipithecus.

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Lovejoy's food provisioning model

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one of the reasons for the origin of bipedalism is due to reproductive reasons. By walking on hind limbs...it frees the hands. Able to carry foods and pair bonding is able to occur.

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Pounding tools

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pre-Oldowan, plant foods, origins of bipedalism, multiple hominins, forest floor settings, ancestral conditions hypothesis. 4-2 ma

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Cutting tools

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Oldowan, carnivore, expanding brain, homo Habilis..woodland/grassland, threshold hypothesis

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Australopithecus anamensis

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first discovery in 1965 by Patterson. it has parallel tooth rows. Thin enamel because mainly fruit eater. Found at Alia bay. Mosaic of apes and human features. Hind limbs suggest bipedality. 4.2-3.9 million years ago.

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Hominid gang

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take credit for the work that researchers in the field are actually doing

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Afarensis

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4-2.9 million years ago. In hadar, ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. The most well known hominid. Clearly a biped. Ape-like limb proportions. Large sexual dimorphism. Still some arboreal adaptations. More than 300 individuals discovered. Site 333 first family. Lucy skeleton 4%.

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Brain of afarensis

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is about the same size of chimp. Very small. Elongated canine. Big gut tell us information about digestive system and what it was eating.

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Geological deposits

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might have preserved fossils from catastrophic events. Big rocks being transported from flash floods. (sand...silt)

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River banks

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target area for lions to catch prey. Did they eat the hominids?

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Division of labor

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can we argue that 3.5 ma that there were social groups that practiced division of labor? Females cooking..males hunting. Risky (subject to competition).

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Two trails of footprints

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one was deeper than the other. Deeper footprinted individual carrying baby perhaps?


indicated a slightly divergent big toe..maybe used for grasping.

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Aferensis existed through a period of environmental fluctuation yet showed no adaptations to the changing environment...why?

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was it because they were able to migrate where their usual food sources were located? Or were their food sources somehow unaffected?

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First discovery of australopithecus

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south Africa in 1924 by Raymond dart.

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Piltdown man

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famous hoax consisting of fragments of a skull and jawbone (of unknown early human) collected in 1912 from a gravel pit on pittdown in England.

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Taung child

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fossilized skull of a young Australopithecus africanus individual.

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Professor broom

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was a south African doctor and paleontologist who discovered fragments for six hominids at sterkfontein


confirmed earlier finding of Raymond dart.

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Were the hominids actually living in limestone caves?

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perhaps they needed shelter or a site to cool off from the extreme heat.

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Little foot

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Sterkfontein. original specimens found by Ron Clarke in 1992. It had been misidentified as fossil bovid elements. Showing grasping ability. Probably living in trees outside of hole in the ground.

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Brain size related to

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carnivore and stone tool use. Emergent of homo habilis

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Emergent of habilis and paranthropines

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adaptive radiation. Group of animals very successful and they find novel ways of exploiting environment

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Threshold hypothesis

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brain size change, carnivory, and stone tool use happening very quickly

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Culture historic

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looking through time through an archaeological standpoint.

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Costs and benefits of being in a lake margin setting

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lush trees is a benefit. Cost is the unknown animals living in the area

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The nutcracker man

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P. Boisei. They found a jaw with big teeth so they assumed that they were used for cracking nuts

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Homo habilis

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handy man responsible for making stone tools; diminutive...500-600 brain...bipedal


Brain size; reduced size of dentition (processing food before it goes into mouth; cutting or pounding; cooking); diminutive size; large thorax;

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Trampling

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other animals walking across olduvai gorge trampled and left footprints

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Dietary hypothesis by Robinson

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diets of different hominins. There were two kinds of hominids in the pleo-pleistoscene. One was robust Australopithecus that was specialized for herbivory and the other was gracile austrlophithecus that was an omnivore.

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Significance of Robinson

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dietary hypothesis eventually led to robust australopithecus going extinct and gracile evolving into homo. By looking at teeth one could tell what type of diet was eaten.

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Paranthropus ate

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plants from forests or galleries in better watered parts. They were living in better shelter.

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Australopithecus ate

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meat and plants from forests but more from open parts of landscape. Like grasslands.

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meat and tool use of homo habilis are related to

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proxies in the archaeological record

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Animal resource acquisition

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how they were getting food

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Koobi fora

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long sequence of tool use; records of evidence of stone tool use; evidence of animal resource acquisition; relative understanding of landscape change throughout the sequence

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Koobi fora formation

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tectonic movements...earth movements...tremors...breaking up vegetation into patches (pressure on animals because they had to move further over ancient landscape to sustain daily requirements for food)