Dental mesowear from the Tugen Hills Succession (Baringo Basin, Kenya) demonstrates increase in mixed-feeding behavior of late Miocene to Plio-Pleistocene Bovidae

The Tugen Hills Succession of the Baringo Basin (Kenya) is a nearly continuous geologic succession spanning from the Middle Miocene (-15.5 Ma) to the Late Pleistocene (-240 ka) that includes one of the largest concentrations of fossil hominoids from 14 to 4 Ma. Paleoecological data from this succession are highly relevant to determining the nature and mode of environmental change during ape and human evolution, and while much work has characterized these environments in the Plio-Pleistocene, less has been done for those from the Miocene and early Pliocene. This study offers the first mesowear dataset for the Tugen Hills Succession and is one of the largest focused specifically on Miocene/Plio-Pleistocene bovids in eastern Africa. These data reflect the general diversity and increase in mixed-feeding behaviors of post-Miocene bovid diets in the THS, and while they can sometimes be extrapolated to describe an 'opening' of environments after the late Miocene, the enigmatic influence of spatial and temporal scale limit assemblage-level claims of paleoenvironment. The diversification of mesowear scores in the Plio-Pleistocene data is generally supported by bovid delta 13C values from the late Cenozoic of eastern and southern Africa and underscores the utility of combining both proxies in the characterization of bovid dietary ecology.