Modeling Preservation Bias to Improve Hominin Habitat Reconstructions
Open Access DepositedHuman evolution has long been contextualized by paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Many correlative links have been made between the environmental, morphological, and behavioral records but the causal mechanisms behind these have remained relatively elusive. One likely reason for this is that we are still in the process of understanding what paleoenvironmental proxies, particularly the mammalian fossil record, tell us about past landscapes. To go beyond correlation and begin identifying causation between patterns in human evolution and the environment we must continue to expand our understanding of the detectable information provided by the mammalian fossil record. This dissertation focuses on habitat-level taphonomic factors including differences in available biomass and sedimentation rate across landscapes as well as analytical spatiotemporal biases that impact the fidelity of the fossil record to original landscapes. Here a novel agent-based model is used to identify patterns of bias in simulated fossil records that can be adjusted for in our interpretation of the actual record. These expectations are applied to geochemical analyses of the first systematic surface collections from the Turkana Basin and suggest future directions to adjust for the impact of biases inherent in the fossil record. Based on the results of these studies it is evident that in addition to spatiotemporal biases caused by sampling efforts and the formation of the fossil record, the representation of mammals in the fossil record is directly controlled by carrying capacities of habitats on original landscapes. These biases are baked into environments even before the fossil record is formed. These findings highlight the complexity of the mammalian fossil record and identify ways to improve our understanding of past landscapes even with these biases in play. With the expectations developed in this dissertation, hominin environmental reconstructions will increase in ecological relevance and allow for our improved understanding of the relationship between hominins and the environments in which they evolved.
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