Reconstructions of African palaeoenvironments are essential for a full understanding of early hominin evolution, but they are often hampered by low-resolution or discontinuous climatic data. Here we present high-resolution oxygen (?18O) and carbon (?13C) isotope time series for the Pliocene/early Pleistocene (1.99 to 1.52 Ma) of South Africa, derived from the Buffalo Cave flowstone deposit. The ?18O data are dominated by variations at the orbital precession period (18-23 ka), as is typical for records of sub-tropical monsoon rainfall. The ?13C data indicate the proportion of savannah grasses (C4 plants) compared to trees and shrubs (C3 plants), and this signal is dominated by an obliquity periodicity (40 ka), commonly associated with high-latitude ice-sheet dynamics. A rapid increase in savannah grass proportions between 1.78 and 1.69 Ma coincides with a pulse in African mammal turnover, and lends support to an adaptive link between the appearance of African Homo erectus and the increasingly savannah-dominated environment.
Journal articles from the Grassland Society of Southern Africa (GSSA) African Journal of Range and Forage Science as well as related articles and reports from throughout the southern African region.