Paleoclimate and evolution, with emphasis on human origins

✍ Scribed by Cachel, Susan

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 22 KB
• Volume: 105
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-9483
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-8644(199801)105:1<97::aid-ajpa11>3.0.co;2-g

✦ Synopsis

Since 1984, the editors of this book have organized three major workshops on climate and evolution. Practice makes perfect. This splendid volume is the result of a conference held in May, 1993, at Airlie, Virginia, that was devoted to testing the general relationship between evolution and climate change. Although at least one chapter deals with every continent and the time considered ranges from the Oligocene to the Holocene, the Plio/Pleistocene of Africa receives special attention here, because human evolution is emphasized. Researchers with diverse specializations in geology, climatology, and paleontology have been assembled, and the editors have ensured that these writers strictly address the major theme of the conference. A dominant feature of the book is the presence of abundant original data; detailed taxonomic and methodological appendices also conclude many chapters. Some authors deal with regional climate and evolution in terms of a specific animal group-for example, large herbivores (Webb et al.), bovids (Vrba), suids (White), rodents (Wesselman), and micromammals (Avery). Other authors provide major new syntheses of crucial interest to physical anthropologists-for example, terrestrial faunal diversity in the Neogene of Pakistan (Barry), the impact of global climate and regional tectonic changes on large mammal evolution in East and South Africa (Partridge et al.), paleoclimate in the Turkana Basin and throughout East Africa (Brown), and faunal and environmental change in the Tugen Hills, Kenya (Hill). Bonnefille presents the first synthesis in a decade of the East Afri-