Tooth enamel decodes Africa's ancient landscapes shaping early humans
Researchers analyze chemical traces in fossil tooth enamel from Ethiopia’s Afar region to reconstruct how landscapes and diets changed over the past ~4 million years. Enamel preserves signals of what plants ancient animals ate, revealing forests, wetlands, and grassy plains that expanded into open savannas around 2–3 million years ago. The data suggest early hominins like Australopithecus afarensis had flexible, mixed diets, and that environmental shifts helped drive human evolution, including tool use and upright walking.