Pleistocene animal communities of a 1.5 million-year-old lake margin grassland and their relationship to Homo erectus paleoecology

The ecological and selective forces that sparked the emergence of Homo's adaptive strategy remain poorly understood. New fossil and archaeological finds call into question previous interpretations of the grade shift that drove our ancestors' evolutionary split from the australopiths. Furthermore, issues of taphonomy and scale have limited reconstructions of the hominin habitats and faunal communities that define the environmental context of...