Hominoid Evolution And Climatic Change In Europe Volume 1 The Evolution Of Neogene Terrestrial Ecosystems In Europe

Reconstructs European and Mediterranean climate over the last 20 million years in relation to human evolution.

What is the place of Europe in the origin of humankind? While our earliest human ancestors may have come out of Africa, many of our more recent ancestors and those of other primates left their fossil remains in Europe and the Near East. Hominoid primates including Dryopithecus in Spain and Hungary, Oreopithecus in Italy, and Ouranopithecus in Greece flourished in the Miocene, approximately 10-7 million years ago. This volume examines these and other hominoid fossils found in Eurasia and discusses what we can learn using biostratigraphic and ecological frameworks. In addition, new methods of analyzing and visualizing fossil hominoids are explored, including CT-based and computer-assisted virtual reconstruction of fossils to allow three-dimensional images of external and internal morphology of even fragmentary or distorted fossils. This volume will be invaluable for practicing palaeoanthropologists and palaeontologists regardless of specialty.

This volume presents an array of different case studies which take as primary material data sourced from the NOW (‘New and Old Worlds’) database of fossil mammals. The NOW database was one of the very first large paleobiological databases, and since 1996 it has been expanded from including mainly Neogene European land mammals to cover the entire Cenozoic at a global scale. In the last two decades the number of works that are based in the use of huge databases to explore ecological and evolutionary questions has increased exponentially, and even though the importance of big data in paleobiological research has been outlined in selected chapters of general works, no volume has appeared before this one which solely focuses on the databases as a primary source in reconstructing the past. The purpose of this book is to provide an illustrative volume showing the importance of big data in paleobiological research, and presenting a broad array of unpublished examples and case studies. The book is mainly aimed to professional palaeobiologists working with Cenozoic land mammals, but the scope of the book is broad enough to fit the interest for evolutionary biologists, paleoclimatologists and paleoecologists. The volume is divided in four parts. The first part includes two chapters on the development of large paleobiological databases, providing a first-hand account on the logic and the functioning of these databases. This is a much-needed perspective which is ignored by most researchers and users of such databases and, even if centered in the NOW database, the lessons that can be learned from this part can be extended to other examples. After this introductory part, the body of the book follows and is divided into three parts: patterns in regional faunas; large scale patterns and processes; and ecological, biogeographical and evolutionary patterns of key taxa. Each chapter is written by well-known specialists in the field, with some participation of members of the NOW advisory board. The array of selected mammal taxa ranges from carnivores, equids, ruminants and rodents to the genus Homo. The topics studied also include the diversification and radiation of major clades, large-scale paleobiogeographical patterns, the evolution of ecomorphological patterns and paleobiological problems such as evolution of body size or species longevity. In most cases the results are discussed in relation to protracted environmental or paleogeographic changes.

This is the first volume of its kind on prehistoric cultures of South Asia. The book brings together archaeologists, biological anthropologists, geneticists and linguists in order to provide a comprehensive account of the history and evolution of human populations residing in the subcontinent. New theories and methodologies presented provide new interpretations about the cultural history and evolution of populations in South Asia.

This 3-volume handbook brings together contributions by the world ́s leading specialists that reflect the broad spectrum of modern palaeoanthropology, thus presenting an indispensable resource for professionals and students alike. Vol. 1 reviews principles, methods, and approaches, recounting recent advances and state-of-the-art knowledge in phylogenetic analysis, palaeoecology and evolutionary theory and philosophy. Vol. 2 examines primate origins, evolution, behaviour, and adaptive variety, emphasizing integration of fossil data with contemporary knowledge of the behaviour and ecology of living primates in natural environments. Vol. 3 deals with fossil and molecular evidence for the evolution of Homo sapiens and its fossil relatives.

Located at the southwest corner of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, Lothagam represents one of the most important intervals in African prehistory. Early human remains are restricted in distribution to Africa and the acquisition of an upright bipedal striding gait, the hallmark of humanity, appears to be at least circumstantially linked to the reduction of equatorial forests and the spread of grasslands on that continent. The diverse Lothagam fauna documents the end-Miocene transition from forested to more open habitats that were exploited by grazing horses and antelopes, hippos, giant pigs, and true elephants. It also includes spectacularly complete fossil carnivore skeletons and some of the oldest human remains. Enlisting a team of highly qualified specialists, this book provides the geologic context and dating framework for the Lothagam fossiliferous sequences, describes the immense diversity of vertebrate fossils recovered from the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene sediments, and synthesizes the results to interpret the changing paleoenvironments that prevailed at this site. The book will interest anthropologists, paleontologists, geologists, and anyone interested in human origins.

Looking at a period of history 22 to 2.5 million years ago, this title examines the record of the Neogene fossil apes: their adaptive trends, their morphologies and their relationships to the environment, their evolution and their extinctions, to provideinsights into the evolution of our most distant and our most immediate fossil ancestors.

In this masterwork, Russell H. Tuttle synthesizes a vast research literature in primate evolution and behavior to explain how apes and humans evolved in relation to one another, and why humans became a bipedal, tool-making, culture-inventing species distinct from other hominoids. Along the way, he refutes the influential theory that men are essentially killer apes—sophisticated but instinctively aggressive and destructive beings. Situating humans in a broad context, Tuttle musters convincing evidence from morphology and recent fossil discoveries to reveal what early primates ate, where they slept, how they learned to walk upright, how brain and hand anatomy evolved simultaneously, and what else happened evolutionarily to cause humans to diverge from their closest relatives. Despite our genomic similarities with bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, humans are unique among primates in occupying a symbolic niche of values and beliefs based on symbolically mediated cognitive processes. Although apes exhibit behaviors that strongly suggest they can think, salient elements of human culture—speech, mating proscriptions, kinship structures, and moral codes—are symbolic systems that are not manifest in ape niches. This encyclopedic volume is both a milestone in primatological research and a critique of what is known and yet to be discovered about human and ape potential.