Archaeological and bone chemistry.
Archaeological and bone chemistry evidence indicate that Paranthropus robustus (and likely boisei as well) ate some meat. However, their huge check teeth suggest that they had evolved to depend primarily on some other dietary source. Considering that these Paranthropine species likely had similar dietary restrictions as other hominins (they likely couldn’t eat grass, for example), what sort of diet would you postulate they followed and what sort of environmental conditions would this reflect? Assume for simplicity sake here, that both Sahelanthropus tchadensis and Orrorin tugenensis represent the first hominins following the hominin divergence from our ape ancestor that we shared with panini (the Chimpanzees and Bonobos). Also assume that that ape ancestor essentially looked like a chimpanzee. Also assume, just for this exercise, that each later genus is the descendent of the previous one (Orrorin descended from Sahelanthropus, Ardipithecus descended from Orrorin, etc.). For each hominin genus we covered in lecture 6, and based on their descriptions from the lecture and textbook, list each genus’ plesiomorphic and apomorphic traits relative to their respective directly preceding genus (doing this in table form is easiest).