Terrestrial plant biomarkers and their carbon isotopes provide insights into carbon cycling,
paleovegetation and paleoclimate, ranging in scale from local to global. Over the past …

The response of the terrestrial biosphere to warming remains one of the most poorly
understood and quantified aspects of the climate system. One way to test the behavior of the …

During the “Green Sahara” period (11,000 to 5000 years before the present), the Sahara
desert received high amounts of rainfall, supporting diverse vegetation, permanent lakes …

The assembly of Africa's iconic C4 grassland ecosystems is central to evolutionary
interpretations of many mammal lineages, including hominins. C4 grasses are thought to …

A potential human footprint on Western Central African rainforests before the Common Era
has become the focus of an ongoing controversy. Between 3,000 y ago and 2,000 y ago …

The evolution of C4 grassland ecosystems in eastern Africa has been intensely studied
because of the potential influence of vegetation on mammalian evolution, including that of …

Living hominoids are distinguished by upright torsos and versatile locomotion. It is
hypothesized that these features evolved for feeding on fruit from terminal branches in …

Savanna ecosystems were the landscapes for human evolution and are vital to modern Sub-
Saharan African food security, yet the fundamental drivers of climate and ecology in these …

Plant leaf waxes have been found to record the hydrogen isotopic composition of
precipitation and are thus used to reconstruct past climate. To assess how faithfully they …

Terrestrial leaf wax n-alkane biomarkers provide considerable insights into
paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Over decades, a substantial number of field …