2023-04-17 18:10:39
At the beginning of the Miocene, 23 million years ago, temperatures were 5 to 6°C higher than current temperatures (photo illustration). Basse def
The continent has become more arid. This climate change has altered landscapes and influenced human evolution.
Evolution is a random phenomenon driven by natural selection. New characters appear with mutations, these characters impose themselves when they confer an advantage, and it happens that environmental changes accelerate this phenomenon. Two new studies published in the journal Science bring new elements on a crucial period of the ancestors of the human line. 21 million years ago, climate change made Africa more arid, favoring the appearance of savannahs and grasslands and thus fragmenting the great tropical forests. A transformation of landscapes that occurred more than 10 million years earlier than scientists thought, and which coincides with the appearance of new forms of locomotion in certain primates.
« Climate models published in 2006 had already evoked this aridification of Africa, ccomments Sébastien Nomade, geochemist and paleoclimatologist at the Laboratory of Climate and…
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