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      Messinian age and savannah environment of the possible hominin Graecopithecus from Europe

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          Abstract

          Dating fossil hominids and reconstructing their environments is critically important for understanding human evolution. Here we date the potentially oldest hominin, Graecopithecus freybergi from Europe and constrain the environmental conditions under which it thrived. For the Graecopithecus-bearing Pikermi Formation of Attica/Greece, a saline aeolian dust deposit of North African (Sahara) provenance, we obtain an age of 7.37–7.11 Ma, which is coeval with a dramatic cooling in the Mediterranean region at the Tortonian-Messinian transition. Palaeobotanic proxies demonstrate C4-grass dominated wooded grassland-to-woodland habitats of a savannah biome for the Pikermi Formation. Faunal turnover at the Tortonian-Messinian transition led to the spread of new mammalian taxa along with Graecopithecus into Europe. The type mandible of G. freybergi from Pyrgos (7.175 Ma) and the single tooth (7.24 Ma) from Azmaka (Bulgaria) represent the first hominids of Messinian age from continental Europe. Our results suggest that major splits in the hominid family occurred outside Africa.

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          The least-squares line and plane and the analysis of palaeomagnetic data

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            Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence

            Summary Gorillas are humans’ closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly and analysis of a genome sequence for the western lowland gorilla, and compare the whole genomes of all extant great ape genera. We propose a synthesis of genetic and fossil evidence consistent with placing the human-chimpanzee and human-chimpanzee-gorilla speciation events at approximately 6 and 10 million years ago (Mya). In 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other; this is rarer around coding genes, indicating pervasive selection throughout great ape evolution, and has functional consequences in gene expression. A comparison of protein coding genes reveals approximately 500 genes showing accelerated evolution on each of the gorilla, human and chimpanzee lineages, and evidence for parallel acceleration, particularly of genes involved in hearing. We also compare the western and eastern gorilla species, estimating an average sequence divergence time 1.75 million years ago, but with evidence for more recent genetic exchange and a population bottleneck in the eastern species. The use of the genome sequence in these and future analyses will promote a deeper understanding of great ape biology and evolution.
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              Classification of the reversal test in palaeomagnetism

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                22 May 2017
                2017
                : 12
                : 5
                : e0177347
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Geosciences, Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen, Germany
                [2 ]Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, Tübingen, Germany
                [3 ]National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
                [4 ]CR2P (UMR 7207), Sorbonne Universités, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CP 38, Paris, France
                [5 ]Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, Germany
                [6 ]Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Geophysics, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany
                [7 ]Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden, Museum of Mineralogy and Geology, GeoPlasmaLab, Dresden, Germany
                [8 ]Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Palaeontology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany
                [9 ]Faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
                [10 ]Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, Dresden, Germany
                [11 ]School of Mathematics and Science, Institute of Biology and Environmental Science, University of Oldenburg, Germany
                Université de Poitiers, FRANCE
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interest exists, including the commercial funding source United Bulgarian Bank. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

                • Conceptualization: MB NS.

                • Formal analysis: MW.

                • Funding acquisition: MB NS GT MW.

                • Investigation: MB NS ME DG LH UK SK UL JP SR GT GU MW.

                • Methodology: MB MW.

                • Project administration: MB.

                • Supervision: MB.

                • Validation: MB MW.

                • Visualization: MB MW.

                • Writing – original draft: MB MW UK NS DG LH SR.

                • Writing – review & editing: MB MW.

                [¤]

                Current address: Earth Dynamics Research Group, Australian Research Council, Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems and The Institute for Geoscience Research, Department of Applied Geology, Western Australian School of Mines, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2100-6164
                Article
                PONE-D-16-50662
                10.1371/journal.pone.0177347
                5439672
                28531204
                e10f79bf-feea-4b96-b5f4-b2967aa8f9d3
                © 2017 Böhme et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 22 December 2016
                : 26 April 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 13, Tables: 1, Pages: 31
                Funding
                Funded by: German Science Foundation (DFG)
                Award ID: BO1550/19-1
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: German Science Foundation (DFG)
                Award ID: WI1828/4-2
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: United Bulgarian Bank
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: European Union, SYNTHESIS
                Award ID: AT-TAF-2283 and GB-TAF-1678
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: Special Account for Research Grants of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
                Award ID: 70/3/9494, 70/3/10437, 70/4/3570, 70/4/11078 and 70/3/12977
                Award Recipient :
                This work was supported by the German Science Foundation, BO1550/19-1, WI1828/4-2, http://www.dfg.de/ and the United Bulgarian Bank, https://www.ubb.bg/eng. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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