Elke Zeller

Oct 9, 2024 | science.org | Deborah Carper |Hyun Lee |Nolan Tucker |Elke Zeller

AbstractOver the past 3 million years, humans have expanded their ecological niche and adapted to more diverse environments. The temporal evolution and underlying drivers behind this niche expansion remain largely unknown. By combining archeological findings with landscape topographic data and model simulations of the climate and biomes, we show that human sites clustered in areas with increased terrain roughness, corresponding to higher levels of biodiversity.

May 11, 2023 | science.org | Cassandra Burdziak |Viridiana Villa-Islas |Xiaoshi Qian |Elke Zeller

Editor’s summaryEarly humans and their hominin relatives had to adapt to new environments to spread out of Africa. Zeller et al. explored the movements of hominins across and preferences for different biomes by comparing six Homo species distributions from the fossil record against simulated climate and vegetation over the past 3 million years. They found that some later species inhabited a broader range of biomes as they spread to colder and more forested areas, especially H.