Publication Date:
2006-11-11
Description:
Traditional methods of dietary reconstruction do not allow the investigation of dietary variability within the lifetimes of individual hominins. However, laser ablation stable isotope analysis reveals that the delta13C values of Paranthropus robustus individuals often changed seasonally and interannually. These data suggest that Paranthropus was not a dietary specialist and that by about 1.8 million years ago, savanna-based foods such as grasses or sedges or animals eating these foods made up an important but highly variable part of its diet.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Sponheimer, Matt -- Passey, Benjamin H -- de Ruiter, Darryl J -- Guatelli-Steinberg, Debbie -- Cerling, Thure E -- Lee-Thorp, Julia A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Nov 10;314(5801):980-2.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17095699" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Carbon Isotopes/*analysis
;
Climate
;
Dental Enamel/*chemistry
;
*Diet
;
Ecosystem
;
*Fossils
;
*Hominidae
;
Lasers
;
*Paleodontology
;
Plants
;
Poaceae
;
Rain
;
Seasons
;
South Africa
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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