Soil and Plant Phytoliths from the Acacia-Commiphora Mosaics at Oldupai Gorge (Tanzania)

Mercader, Julio; Clarke, Siobhán; Bundala, Mariam; Favreau, Julien; Inwood, Jamie; Itambu, Makarius; Larter, Fergus; Lee, Patrick; Lewiski-McQuaid, Garnet; Mollel, Neduvoto; Mwambwiga, Aloyce; Patalano, Robert; Soto, María; Tucker, Laura; Walde, Dale

doi:10.31219/osf.io/3ed7f

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 75 publications

(123 reference statements)

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“…Minimum of 200 phytoliths were counted where possible, or until sample extinction. The referential included several African ecoregions 46,[63][64][65][66][67][68] , and past work at Oldupai Gorge 43,69 . Archaeological samples were compared to a baseline of 29 plant species and 35 soils from Acacia-Commiphora woodland mosaics from the study area, using general and diagnostic approaches to reconstruct physiognomy and plant cover rank through their phytolith signal 46 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ~ 2 million years ago

et al. 2021

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Rapid environmental change is a catalyst for human evolution, driving dietary innovations, habitat diversification, and dispersal. However, there is a dearth of information to assess hominin adaptions to changing physiography during key evolutionary stages such as the early Pleistocene. Here we report a multiproxy dataset from Ewass Oldupa, in the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania, to address this lacuna and offer an ecological perspective on human adaptability two million years ago. Oldupai’s earliest hominins sequentially inhabited the floodplains of sinuous channels, then river-influenced contexts, which now comprises the oldest palaeolake setting documented regionally. Early Oldowan tools reveal a homogenous technology to utilise diverse, rapidly changing environments that ranged from fern meadows to woodland mosaics, naturally burned landscapes, to lakeside woodland/palm groves as well as hyper-xeric steppes. Hominins periodically used emerging landscapes and disturbance biomes multiple times over 235,000 years, thus predating by more than 180,000 years the earliest known hominins and Oldowan industries from the Eastern side of the basin.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theropithecus oswaldi) 44,45 as well as perennial water indicators (Chelonia, Crocodylus, and Hippopotamus) (Supplementary Table 4). Phytoliths show woody dicots and grasses booming and busting cyclically 46 , while grassland encroachment on woodlands occurred twice ( Supplementary Fig. 5b).…”

Section: 3 Supplementarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ~ 2 million years ago

et al. 2021

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“…If the contaminant is unequivocally clay, the remedy is an additional flocculation step with a common clay‐dispersing agent, for example, sodium hexametaphosphate (Na 6 [(PO 3 ) 6 ]; cf. Mercader et al, 2019). To determine the mass of clays removed, the clay‐laden supernatant can be withdrawn and put into another centrifuge tube, washed with Milli‐Q water, and centrifuged to produce a pellet.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differentiating siliceous particulate matter in the diets of mammalian herbivores

et al. 2022

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1. Silica is crucial to terrestrial plant life and geochemical cycling on Earth. It is also implicated in the evolution of mammalian teeth, but there is debate over which type of siliceous particle has exerted the strongest selective pressure on tooth morphology.2. Debate revolves around the amorphous silica bodies (phytoliths) present in plants and the various forms of siliceous grit-that is, crystalline quartz (sand, soil, dust)-on plant surfaces. The problem is that conventional measures of silica often quantify both particle types simultaneously.3. Here we describe a protocol that relies on heavy-liquid flotation to separate and quantify siliceous particulate matter in the diets of herbivores. The method is reproducible and well suited to detecting species-or population-level differences in silica ingestion. In addition, we detected meaningful variation within the digestive tracts of cows, an outcome that supports the premise of ruminal fluid 'washing' of siliceous grit. 4. We used bootstrap resampling to estimate the sample sizes needed to compare species, populations or individuals in space and time. We found that a minimum sample of 12 individuals is necessary if the species is a browser or as many as 55 if the species is a grazer, which are more variable. But a sample size of 20 is adequate for detecting statistical differences. We conclude by suggesting that our protocol for differentiating and quantifying silica holds promise for testing competing hypotheses on the evolution of dental traits.

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“…O crescente aumento de coleções de referências de fitólitos produzidos em plantas atuais, com dados sobre morfologia, morfometria e produção intra e entre espécies (por exemplo, RUNGE 1999, CARNELLI et al 2001, SUNDUE 2009, RAITZ 2012, RICARDO et al 2018, MERCADER et al 2019, SOUZA 2019, MOZER 2021 têm permitido contribuir significativamente no conhecimento da acumulação de sílica e produção de fitólitos entre os diferentes taxa em vários níveis de hierarquia de plantas vasculares.…”

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Fitólitos – Uma ferramenta para estudos de reconstituição paleoambiental

Calegari¹,

Souza²,

Mozer³

et al. 2022

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Os fitólitos são estruturas microscópicas de sílica (SiO2.nH2O) produzidos nos tecidos vegetais. O interesse pelo estudo dos fitólitos tem crescido significativamente nos últimos anos no Brasil e no mundo devido a sua grande variedade de usos, desde a arqueologia até a medicina legal e por sua natureza altamente interdisciplinar. A análise fitolítica recentemente tem sido entendida como uma superdisciplina, que perpassa por diferentes escalas de análise. Estudos referentes a produção de fitólitos, variações de forma e tamanho e, a análise/interpretação de assembleias preservadas em solos e sedimentos têm contribuído para a compreensão de questões paleoambientais e paleoarqueobotânicas. Com vistas a relevância e visibilidade que a análise de fitólitos tem apresentado, sobretudo no Brasil, se apresenta aqui uma revisão sobre os principais aspectos relacionados a essa técnica e as aplicações no Brasil.

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Soil and Plant Phytoliths from the Acacia-Commiphora Mosaics at Oldupai Gorge (Tanzania)

Cited by 4 publications

References 75 publications

Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ~ 2 million years ago

Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ~ 2 million years ago

Differentiating siliceous particulate matter in the diets of mammalian herbivores

Fitólitos – Uma ferramenta para estudos de reconstituição paleoambiental

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