Kantis: A new Australopithecus site on the shoulders of the Rift Valley near Nairobi, Kenya
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Date
2016-05Author
Mbua, Emma
Kusaka, Soichiro
Kunimatsu, Yutaka
Geraads, Denis
Sawada, Yoshihiro
Brown, Francis H
Sakai, Tetsuya
Boisserie, Jean-Renaud
Saneyoshi, Mototaka
Omuombo, Christine
Muteti, Samuel
Hirata, Takafumi
Hayashida, Akira
Iwano, Hideki
Danhara, Tohru
Bobe, René
Jicha, Brian
Nakatsukas, Masato
Type
ArticleLanguage
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Show full item recordAbstract
Most Plio-Pleistocene sites in the Gregory Rift Valley that have yielded abundant fossil hominins lie on the Rift Valley floor. Here we report a new Pliocene site, Kantis, on the shoulder of the Gregory Rift Valley, which extends the geographical range of Australopithecus afarensis to the highlands of Kenya. This species, known from sites in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and possibly Kenya, is believed to be adapted to a wide spectrum of habitats, from open grassland to woodland. The Kantis fauna is generally similar to that reported from other contemporaneous A. afarensis sites on the Rift Valley floor. However, its faunal composition and stable carbon isotopic data from dental enamel suggest a stronger C4 environment than that present at those sites. Although the Gregory Rift Valley has been the focus of paleontologists' attention for many years, surveys of the Rift shoulder may provide new perspective on African Pliocene mammal and hominin evolution.
URI
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248416000208http://hdl.handle.net/11295/97949
Citation
Journal of Human Evolution Volume 94, May 2016, Pages 28–44Publisher
University of Nairobi