HEADLINE: The Pleistocene Mammoth Steppe and the Mosaic Environment of Early Human Evolution BOOK TITLE: Other Lands, a journey through Earth's Extinct Worlds GUEST AUTHOR NAME: Thomas Halliday 200-WORD SUMMARY: This excerpt introduces the work of paleont

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HEADLINE: The Pleistocene Mammoth Steppe and the Mosaic Environment of Early Human Evolution
BOOK TITLE: Other Lands, a journey through Earth's Extinct Worlds

GUEST AUTHOR NAME: Thomas Halliday
200-WORD SUMMARY: This excerpt introduces the work of paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Thomas Halliday, beginning in the Pleistocene era, 20,000 years ago. The focus is the Mammoth Steppe, described as the largest ecosystem on the planet. This cold, arid, grass-dominated environment stretched from Western Europe across Beringia into Alaska and the Yukon, managed by large herbivores like mammoths, woolly rhinos, and bison. Today, this entire community is essentially non-existent. The apex predator discussed is Arctodus Simus, the fearsomely large short-faced bear. The narrative then moves backward to the Pliocene, 4 million years ago, in the East African Rift Valley(Kenya/Ethiopia). This region, marked by sequences of ancient lakes, features a crucial mosaic environment of forests and grasslands. This mixed habitat was extremely important for the evolution of versatile, problem-solving organisms, including early human ancestors. The earliest species definitively known to be more closely related to humans than chimpanzees, Orrorin tugenensis, occupied this land. Halliday emphasizes exploring ecosystems that, while humans were present globally, were not yet heavily modified by human activity.