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The rise and fall of the Old World savannah fauna and the origins of the African savannah biome

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 241–246 (2018)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 15 January 2018

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Abstract

Despite much interest in the ecology and origins of the extensive grassland ecosystems of the modern world, the biogeographic relationships of savannah palaeobiomes of Africa, India and mainland Eurasia have remained unclear. Here we assemble the most recent data from the Neogene mammal fossil record in order to map the biogeographic development of Old World mammalian faunas in relation to palaeoenvironmental conditions. Using genus-level faunal similarity and mean ordinated hypsodonty in combination with palaeoclimate modelling, we show that savannah faunas developed as a spatially and temporally connected entity that we term the Old World savannah palaeobiome. The Old World savannah palaeobiome flourished under the influence of middle and late Miocene global cooling and aridification, which resulted in the spread of open habitats across vast continental areas. This extensive biome fragmented into Eurasian and African branches due to increased aridification in North Africa and Arabia during the late Miocene. Its Eurasian branches had mostly disappeared by the end of the Miocene, but the African branch survived and eventually contributed to the development of Plio–Pleistocene African savannah faunas, including their early hominins. The modern African savannah fauna is thus a continuation of the extensive Old World savannah palaeobiome.

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Fig. 1: GFRI results of all the localities from the Old World Neogene used in this study.
Fig. 2: Maps of tooth crown height for the Old World Neogene.
Fig. 3: Raup–Crick genus-level faunal similarity to the Lower Nawata.
Fig. 4: Three-dimensional spatiotemporal Raup–Crick GFRI interpolations with values above 0.7 from 12 to 1.8 Ma for the Nawatian (blue), Pikermian (red) and Baodean (yellow) faunas.
Fig. 5: Climate model simulations for precipitation over the Old World in the present day.

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Change history

  • 15 January 2018

    In the version of this Article originally published, each of the five panels in Fig. 5 incorrectly contained a black diagonal line across the plot. This has now been corrected.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Karme and G. Berni for their guidance with the three-dimensional geology software and the Department of Geosciences and Geography at the University of Helsinki for providing LeapFrog Geo. We are grateful to A. H. Kaya for language improvement. J.T.E. acknowledges support from the Marie Curie Actions of the EC and Kone Foundation. M.F. acknowledges funding from the Academy of Finland and an award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The work of F.K. was supported by an Academy of Finland grant to M.F.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, PO Box 64 (G. Hälströminkatu 2), Helsinki, Finland

    Ferhat Kaya, Indrė Žliobaitė, Jussi T. Eronen & Mikael Fortelius

  2. Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Invalidenstrasse 43, Berlin, Germany

    Faysal Bibi & Mikael Fortelius

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, PO Box 64 (G. Hälströminkatu 2), Helsinki, Finland

    Indrė Žliobaitė

  4. BIOS Independent Research Unit, Kalliolanrinne 4, Helsinki, Finland

    Jussi T. Eronen

  5. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, Senckenberganlage 25, Frankfurt, Germany

    Jussi T. Eronen

  6. Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, PO Box 1047 Blindern, Oslo, Norway

    Tang Hui

  7. Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, PO Box 1066 Blindern, Oslo, Norway

    Mikael Fortelius

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  1. Ferhat Kaya
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Contributions

F.K., M.F., J.T.E. and F.B. designed the research. F.K. updated the taxonomic identifications of African localities in the NOW database, performed the computational similarity and mean ordinated hypsodonty analyses and designed the figures. I.Z. performed the sensitivity tests and analysis of the computational methodology. H.T. (T.H.) performed the climate modelling. All authors participated in the interpretation of the results and wrote the paper. M.F. supervised the study. Some of the same content, including an earlier manuscript version of this paper, was included in the PhD thesis of Ferhat Kaya25. A single-authored article published by Ferhat Kaya in the Turkish social sciences journal Kebikec34 used the same data and methods to analyse the Anatolian subset of localities. The Turkish text is closely focused on Anatolia but the English abstract of that paper mentions some of the main conclusions of this paper.

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Correspondence to Ferhat Kaya.

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Supplementary information

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Supplementary data and methods

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Supplementary Table 1

List of some selected localities with their age information and GFRI values to the Lower Nawata in Figs. 1, 3 and 4. Abbreviations; PDL stands for Present Day Location, N symbolize stands for sample size, and GFRI stands for genus level faunal resemblance indices

Supplementary Table 4

List of selected early and middle Miocene sites with age information and GFRI values used for Raup-Crick GFRI analysis in Figs. 1, 3 and 4.

Supplementary Table 5

List of selected late Miocene sites with age information and GFRI values used for Raup-Crick GFRI analysis in Figs. 1, 3 and 4.

Supplementary Table 6

List of selected Pliocene sites with age information and GFRI values used for Raup-Crick GFRI analysis in Figs. 1, 3 and 4.

Supplementary Table 7

The locality list with age information and mean hypsodonty values used for mean ordinated hypsodonty analysis in Figs. 1 and 2.

Supplementary Figure 11

Biogeographical development of the OWSP during the late Miocene. Video animation of the Raup-Crick GFRI with values above 0.7 from 12 to 1.8 Ma for the Nawatian (blue), Pikermian (red), and Baodean (yellow). The increase in the similarity among the Eurasian and African early late Miocene faunas coincides with the parallel expansion of the Nawatian, the Pikermian and the Baodean resulted in the birth of the Old World savanna paleobiome that reaches its climax during the middle late Miocene. The Pikermian decreases suddenly in western and central Eurasia, the Baodean chronofauna survives into the Pliocene and disappear, and the Nawatian eventually evolved to the East African modern savanna fauna.

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Kaya, F., Bibi, F., Žliobaitė, I. et al. The rise and fall of the Old World savannah fauna and the origins of the African savannah biome. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 241–246 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0414-1

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