Plio-Pleistocene environmental variability in Africa and its implications for mammalian evolution
Author
Cohen, Andrew S.Du, Andrew
Rowan, John
Yost, Chad L.
Billingsley, Anne L.
Campisano, Christopher J.
Brown, Erik T.
Deino, Alan L.
Feibel, Craig S.
Grant, Katharine
Kingston, John D.
Lupien, Rachel L.
Muiruri, Veronica
Owen, R. Bernhart
Reed, Kaye E.
Russell, James
Stockhecke, Mona
Affiliation
Department of Geosciences, University of ArizonaIssue Date
2022-04-11
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Cohen, A. S., Du, A., Rowan, J., Yost, C. L., Billingsley, A. L., Campisano, C. J., Brown, E. T., Deino, A. L., Feibel, C. S., Grant, K., Kingston, J. D., Lupien, R. L., Muiruri, V., Owen, R. B., Reed, K. E., Russell, J., & Stockhecke, M. (2022). Plio-Pleistocene environmental variability in Africa and its implications for mammalian evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.Rights
Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This article is distributed under Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Significance: We have developed an Africa-wide synthesis of paleoenvironmental variability over the Plio-Pleistocene. We show that there is strong evidence for orbital forcing of variability during this time that is superimposed on a longer trend of increasing environmental variability, supporting a combination of both low- and high-latitude drivers of variability. We combine these results with robust estimates of mammalian speciation and extinction rates and find that variability is not significantly correlated with these rates. These findings do not currently support a link between environmental variability and turnover and thus fail to corroborate predictions derived from the variability selection hypothesis.Note
Open access articleISSN
0027-8424EISSN
1091-6490PubMed ID
35412903Version
Final published versionSponsors
National Science Foundationae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1073/pnas.2107393119
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This article is distributed under Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
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