Abstract
Chapter 7 explores the biology of the australopiths beyond their taxonomy, examining the evidence for their habitats, diet, and social structure. Although food selection is a crucial aspect of interaction with a habitat, all lines of evidence lead to an equally vague indication of a broad omnivorous diet centered on available (and largely unknown) fruits. Relative brain size (encephalization) is difficult to assess because it depends on estimating body size, reconstructing crania, and dealing with variation across species, populations, and time. Our best guess indicates only a slight increase in encephalization compared to modern great apes and little change in body growth rate, which we expect to correlate with brain size.
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Langdon, J.H. (2022). Understanding Australopiths. In: Human Evolution. Springer Texts in Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14157-7_7
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