Evolutionary changes to Homo body size and proportionality across 800,000 years of global climate change
The challenge with testing the impact of climate change on hominins is a lack of comparable sample data. Few intact skeletons exist, and body size estimates are difficult to ascertain with only fragmentary skeletal remains. What measurements are available tend to be sparse and come from small sample...
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2022
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| Online Access: | http://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:nl:ui:13-v1-x3fz https://easy.dans.knaw.nl/ui/datasets/id/easy-dataset:244973 |
| Summary: | The challenge with testing the impact of climate change on hominins is a lack of comparable sample data. Few intact skeletons exist, and body size estimates are difficult to ascertain with only fragmentary skeletal remains. What measurements are available tend to be sparse and come from small samples. To test for evolutionary changes in particular, sufficient sample breadth across multiple measurements is needed throughout a large enough timespan where climate data are available at both small and large intervals.The present dataset addresses these issues by examining skeletal remains that are predictive of relative body size in Homo over a period of roughly 700,000 years. Measures of femoral head breadth (mm), proximal tibia plateau breadth (mm), and stature/bi-iliac breadth (cm) of skeletal remains were used to produce 247 body mass (kg) estimates that span from present day to 700,000 years ago (700 kyr BP).Body mass data were compared to five climate records. Global climate change was derived from the ice core at EPICA Dome C, which provides precise surface temperature measurements dating back 809,950 years. Regional climate change was derived from sediment samples recovered from Lake Malawi in eastern Africa and two North Atlantic Ocean deep sea cores located roughly between North America, Africa, and Europe. Pollen sequences in the Burundi Highlands were used to determine precipitation levels and humidity levels were tested using a datasource derived from grain-size analyses of siliciclastic marine sediments from the coast of Mauritania.When comparing Homo body size and proportionality against the climate records, evolutionary body changes correspond to temperature but not precipitation or humidity. THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOVE |
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