Africa's large herbivores decline
Megaherbivore diversity falls steadily through the epoch — and the usual suspect may be innocent.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.6 million years
- Known to
- ± 300 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
The number of megaherbivore lineages in East Africa drops substantially from about 4.5 million years ago onward, a trend often attributed to hominin hunting. Analysis published in 2018 found the decline began long before there is any evidence of hominin predation and tracks the expansion of C4 grassland and falling atmospheric carbon dioxide instead. It is a useful check on a strong prior: the earliest African megafaunal losses look climatic, whatever is true of later continents.