Ruminant diets and the Miocene extinction of European great apes

Gildas Merceron 1, * Thomas M. Kaiser 2 Dimitris S. Kostopoulos 3 Ellen Schulz 2
* Auteur correspondant
1 PP - Paléoenvironnement et paléobiosphère
2 Biozentrum Grindel und Zoologisches Museum
3 School of Geology, Thessaloniki
Abstract : Successful evolutionary radiations of European hominoids and pliopithecoids came to an end during the Late Miocene. Using ruminant diets as environmental proxies, it becomes possible to detect variations in vegetation over time with the potential to explain fluctuations in primate diversity along a NW-SE European transect. Analysis shows that ruminants had diverse diets when primate diversity reached its peak, with more grazers in eastern Europe and more browsers farther west. After the drop in primate diversity, grazers accounted for a greater part of western and central European communities. Eastwards, the converse trend was evident with more browsing ruminants. These opposite trends indicate habitat loss and an increase in environmental uniformity that may have severely favoured the decline of primate diversity.
Keywords : biodiversity hominoids Neogene environmental dynamics ungulates
Type de document :
Article dans une revue
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Royal Society, The, 2010, 277 (1697), pp.3105-3112. <10.1098/rspb.2010.0523>
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https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00687256
Contributeur : Margaret Lartaud <>
Soumis le : jeudi 12 avril 2012 - 16:51:37
Dernière modification le : mardi 12 juin 2012 - 11:06:52

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Gildas Merceron, Thomas M. Kaiser, Dimitris S. Kostopoulos, Ellen Schulz. Ruminant diets and the Miocene extinction of European great apes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Royal Society, The, 2010, 277 (1697), pp.3105-3112. <10.1098/rspb.2010.0523>. <insu-00687256>

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