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Geochemical chronologies in Paranthropus robustus teeth inform habitat and life histories

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 9, pages 1731–1738 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Radiogenic strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr) and the alkaline earth ratios (AERs) Sr/Ca and Ba/Ca in fossil dental enamel can inform the habitat, residence and life histories of early hominins recovered from the Pleistocene cradle-of-humankind sites of Gauteng, South Africa. Key questions, which may be addressed with these indices, are the relative exploitation of wet versus dry botanic regimes and whether early hominins dispersed in a manner similar to that of chimpanzees (characterized by male philopatry and female dispersal at puberty) or to that of humans (who are not so characterized). Here we developed 28 new dental chronologies in 20 Paranthropus robustus teeth from Swartkrans and Kromdraai. Resulting geochemical time series demonstrate that, while maternal 87Sr/86Sr in earlier-forming teeth varies widely, third molar 87Sr/86Sr, derived from postweaning solid foods, progressively converges to 0.7306 ± 0.0035 (± 2 s.d.), which we express as the local isotopically delineated exploitation area (LIDEA). The spatial resolution of LIDEA is determined using a bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr isoscape. In this environmental context, we interpret LIDEA as a quantifiable signal indicating eurytopy (generalization), with some 30% of Sr deriving from riparian woodland habitats. With regard to residence, many individuals arrived at the site after second molar mineralization, while some matured locally, demonstrating both male and female dispersal as well as lifelong local residence. Analysis of both 87Sr/86Sr and the AERs further highlights concomitant patterns, as well as numerous periodicities that may be related to resource depletion, seasonality or lunar cycles.

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Fig. 1: Time series of 87Sr/86Sr reveal habitat and residence.
Fig. 2: Bioavailable 87Sr/86Sr isoscape and assignation maps.
Fig. 3: Time series of 87Sr/86Sr and Sr/Ca reveal periodicities of residence and diet.
Fig. 4: Results of Ba/Ca time-series analyses for P. robustus.

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Data availability

Raw data are available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14497676 (ref. 50), resampled data are available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14355254 (ref. 51), final data are available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14363950 (ref. 52) and input data for the isoscape calculation are available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15496905 (ref. 54).

Code availability

All links to relevant R scripts are available on Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15497667 (ref. 53).

Change history

  • 11 August 2025

    In the version of this article initially published, there was a citation error in the Fig. 1d caption where, in the sentence now reading "Data from ref. 9", ref. 11 was cited initially. The legend is updated in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria, South Africa, L. Kgasi and F. Thackeray for prior access to fossil material made use of in this study and the INSU/CNRS MC-ICPMS national facility at ENS-Lyon. We are grateful to S. Copeland for sharing plant and P. robustus 87Sr/86Sr data, F. Chambat, M. le Corre and T. Tacail for helpful discussion during periodogram calculation, isoscape modelling and data reduction, respectively, and S. H. Ambrose and I. M. Shapiro for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. C.D. is supported by the Calleva Foundation, within CHER at the Natural History Museum, London.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Andrew Sillen

  2. Centre for Human Evolution Research, Natural History Museum, London, UK

    Christopher Dean

  3. Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University College London, London, UK

    Christopher Dean

  4. Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon-Terre, Planètes, Environnement, UMR 5276 CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université Lyon1, Lyon, France

    Vincent Balter

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A.S. led the interpretation of the data and wrote an initial version of the paper. C.D. generated dental chronologies, and V.B. reduced data and generated outputs and figures. All authors reviewed, discussed and commented on the presented results and on the paper.

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Correspondence to Vincent Balter.

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Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Clement Bataille and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Sillen, A., Dean, C. & Balter, V. Geochemical chronologies in Paranthropus robustus teeth inform habitat and life histories. Nat Ecol Evol 9, 1731–1738 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02798-1

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