Serengeti had more large-bodied mammals over 300kg in the Pleistocene than today
6 December 2017
Eight years of excavation work by the Olduvai Geochronology and Archaeology Project (OGAP) has produced a rich vertebrate fauna from several sites within Bed II, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.
![Pleistocene Ecosystem Pleistocene Ecosystem](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/sites/human_evolution/files/styles/large_image/public/pleistocene-ecosystem.jpg?itok=8CGEU6X2)
The Middle Bed II large mammal community is much richer in species and includes a much larger number of large-bodied species (>300 kg) than the modern Serengeti. This reflects the severity of Pleistocene extinctions on African large mammals, with the loss of large species fitting a pattern typical of defaunation or 'downsizing' by human disturbance. However, trophic network (food web) analyses show that the Middle Bed II community was robust, and comparisons with the Serengeti community indicate that the fundamental structure of food webs remained intact despite Pleistocene extinctions. The presence of a generalized meat-eating hominin in the Middle Bed II community would have increased competition among carnivores and vulnerability among herbivores, but the high generality and interconnectedness of the Middle Bed II food web suggests this community was buffered against extinctions caused by trophic interactions. Ignacio de la Torre of the UCL Institute of Archaeology was part of the research team.
Paleoecology of the Serengeti during the Oldowan-Acheulean transition at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania: The mammal and fish evidence
Faysal Bibi, Michael Pante, Antoine Souron, Kathlyn Stewart, Sara Varela, Lars Werdelin, Jean-Renaud Boisseri, Mikael Fortelius, Leslea Hlusko, Jackson Njau, Ignacio de la Torre
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.10.009