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Chapter 9 - Paleo-savannas: Expanding Grasslands

from Part II - The Savanna Garden: Grassy Vegetation and Plant Dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2021

Norman Owen-Smith
Norman Owen-Smith
Affiliation:
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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Summary

This chapter describes how savanna grasslands spread initially during the late Miocene when C4 grasses appeared and expanded further during subsequent periods when global temperatures decreased. C3 grasses were replaced later in South Africa than in eastern Africa. Local vegetation structure and composition fluctuated in response to orbitally controlled cycles in global temperatures and hence aridity. Vegetation transformations from forest to heathland or grassland were surprisingly rapid. Grassland–forest mosaics were more prominently shown in fossil pollen than they are today.

Keywords

savanna originsgrassland expansionorbital cyclesvegetation transformations
Type
Chapter
Information
Only in Africa
The Ecology of Human Evolution
 , pp. 128 - 137
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Suggested Further Reading

Bamford, MK, et al. (2016) Pollen, charcoal and plant macrofossil evidence of Neogene and Quaternary environments in southern Africa. In Knight, J; Grab, SW (eds) Quaternary Environmental Change in Southern Africa. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 306–323.Google Scholar
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