Africa’s earliest apes lived in landscapes that include C4 savanna grasses more than 10 million years earlier than previously thought, according to new findings published in Science on Thursday.
James Madison University geology professor William Lukens was one of 20 authors on two papers published on the topic.
The research establishes a new paradigm for ape evolution and their ecosystems in eastern Africa.
“This is absolutely the pinnacle of my career so far,” said Lukens.
Lukens was a doctoral student at Baylor University when he was asked to join the research team in 2015.
“I developed a new way to estimate what kinds of plants were living on the landscapes based on our measurements of the fossil soils of the sites,” Lukens said. “Some of the rock layers used to be the landscape, the ground with soil forming there. We analyzed different materials in these ancient soils that reflect the above-ground vegetation.”
One paper was led by Laura MacLatchy, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Michigan, and the other was led by Daniel Peppe, a professor of geosciences at Baylor University.
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Crystal Graham
