Tag Archives: ape

Six Million Years of African Savanna

*Open, grassy environments accompanied human evolution*

Scientists using chemical isotopes in ancient soil to measure prehistoric tree cover–in effect, shade–have found that grassy, tree-dotted savannas prevailed at most East African sites where human ancestors and their ape relatives evolved during the past six million years.

“We’ve been able to quantify how much shade was available in the geological past,” says University of Utah geochemist Thure Cerling, lead author of a paper titled “Woody cover and hominin environments in the past 6 million years” on the results in this week’s issue of the journal Nature. (more…)

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