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Hominin Environments in the East African Pliocene: An Assessment of the Faunal Evidence pp 51–76Cite as

African Pliocene and Pleistocene cercopithecid evolution and global climatic change

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Part of the book series: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series ((VERT))

Vrba, 1992, 1995a has put forth a series of hypotheses about the evolution of African mammals, which she has termed “habitat theory.” This theory posits that changes in global climate cause “turnover pulses”, within relatively short periods of time during which occur large numbers of first and last appearances of species. The present study examines whether a turnover pulse, or other forms of faunal change, occurred in the Cercopithecidae, 2.8–2.5 Ma at a time of major global cooling. The East African cercopithecid fossil record is well suited to this analysis because cercopithecids occur at most East African Pliocene and Pleistocene sites and are relatively speciose (Szalay and Delson, 1979; Delson, 1984; Jablonski, 2002). Several approaches are used including examination of cercopithecid species ranges as well as the abundance of larger taxonomic units. Both appearance and abundance data are examined for the Afar Depression and Turkana Basin, whereas only the species range data are studied for all East African and complete sub-Saharan analyses. The results provide no support for a turnover pulse 2.8–2.5 Ma. In fact, the largest number of first and last appearances are clustered around 3.4 and 2.0 Ma, with a shift in abundance at 3.4 Ma in both samples examined. These results are consistent with a relatively constant rate of turnover of cercopithecids between about 4 Ma and the Holocene.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, 97403-1218, Eugene, OR, USA

    S. R. Frost

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, The University of Georgia, 30602-1619, Athens, GA, USA

    René Bobe

  2. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany

    Zeresenay Alemseged

  3. Department of Paleobiology and Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems Program, Smithsonian Institution, 37102, 20013-7012, Washington, DC, USA

    Anna K. Behrensmeyer

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Frost, S.R. (2007). African Pliocene and Pleistocene cercopithecid evolution and global climatic change. In: Bobe, R., Alemseged, Z., Behrensmeyer, A.K. (eds) Hominin Environments in the East African Pliocene: An Assessment of the Faunal Evidence. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-3098-7_3

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