Animal Species in the East African Pliocene

Hominids and Primates

• Primates generally flourished in East Africa during the Pliocene, including some with humanlike features --- their brains were large relative to other apes, they walked upright and they used tools. The oldest skeletal or fossil evidence of the hominids were found in Ethiopia. They included a toe bone, a jawbone and teeth. The hominid likely had a more prominent jaw than modern humans but had modern humans' smaller teeth and a more humanlike, less-sloped face than most primates.

Hoofed Animals and Other Mammals

• Fossils from the southeast coast of Africa reveal that many of the mammals that still live in the region today were already present during the Pliocene, and hoofed animals especially flourished in East Africa during the era. Those animals include giraffes, rhinoceroses, antelopes, elephants and hippopotamuses.

Birds

• Bird fossils, including well-preserved fossilized eggs found in Tanzania, reveal that Pliocene aviary life was very similar to modern aviary life in East Africa. Francolins and guineafowl, which live in areas with dense ground vegetation because they use brush to hide in, have lived in East Africa from at least the Pliocene era through today --- which suggests that during the Pliocene, much of the region was bushland, savanna or open woodland. Smaller birds, such as small species of francolins, and larger birds, such as ostriches, also inhabited East Africa during the Pliocene era and still live there today.

Extinct and Dislocated Animals

• Over the course of the Pliocene, the East African climate cooled and became more arid, and much of the woodlands died back, sending the animals better adapted to life in a tropical climate away from the region or into extinction. For example, though the civet, a small wildcat, is still present in the tropical regions of Asia, it fled East Africa as its climate changed.