Thanks a lot, this is a very interesting article, but I donet know whether it also describes well hominoid expansions IMO.  Hominoid innovations (apes vs monkeys, c 25 Ma?) were apparently rather drastic: larger size, central=vertical spine, longer arms, very broad sternum-thorax-pelvis & tail loss. We explained this by a transition from arboreal monkey-like body-plan to "aquarboreal" ape body-plan (aqua=water, arbor=tree): apparently, Miocene apes waded vertically & climbed arms overhead in swamp or flooded forests, e.g. mangrove forests along the incipient Red Sea, and from there dispersed intercontinentally along the Tethys Ocean coastal forests: the early hylobatids followed the Indian Ocean coastal forests (they evolved later into fast brachiators), the early pongids (sivapiths cs) followed the hylobatids and evolved later into slow suspensory branch-hangers, and the hominids colonized the Mediterranean Sea coastal forests and went inland along rivers & lakes (dryopiths cs), the African Rift & S.Africa (australopiths, Gorilla & Pan) & southern Asia: Pliocene archaic Homo also followed the Indian Ocean coasts (as far as Java & Flores & China) and evolved into littoral divers, and later (Pleistocene?) also followed African & European coasts & rivers. Google "aquarboreal" and "coastal dispersal Pleistocene Homo PPT".

Thanks a lot, very interesting. Crocodile evolution in your opinion shows "long periods of relative stasis and inactivity, interrupted with moments of change".  That strongly reminds us of how hominoids and Homo might have evolved, see our TREE paper "Aquarboreal Ancestors?" (Trends Ecol.Evol.17:212-217), google "aquarboreal".   (1) First, there was a very drastic change in body-plan from monkey-like to ape-like (early-Miocene?): much larger body size (gibbons later reduced body size, but still have long gestation periods), very broad pelvis, thorax and sternum (hominoids are Lati-sternalia), arm lengthening, tail loss, centrally-placed spine suggesting an upright body (for wading bipedally and climbing arms overhead vertically in swamp forests?), cf Morotopithecus (Aaron Filler "The upright ape"), Oreopithecus the "swamp ape", the Trachilos footprints etc. This aquarboreal lifestyle is still seen sometimes in extant apes, google e.g. "gorilla bai" or "bonobo wading".   (2) Much later, begin-Pleistocene (cf climatic coolings?), there was another drastic change: from ape/australopith-like to Homo (erectus): much larger brain size, external nose, leg lengthening, loss of climbing-adaptations etc., google e.g. "coastal dispersal Pleistocene Homo PPT".

Thanks a lot for this.  The very wide & large thorax of Turkana Boy is not unexpected: most if not all archaic Homo had very large thoraxes, not for running long distances as often assumed,  but rather for collecting shallow-water foods such as shellfish (rich in brain-specific nutrients, e.g. DHA). Turkana Boy fossilized in former lake, where they not only waded bipedally but also regularly dived for shallow-aquatic foods, for scientific references google e.g. "coastal dispersal of Pleistocene Homo 2018 Verhaegen".

Fantastic! Thanks a lot.  You say: "And, surprisingly, it did not seem as modern as we expected at the beginning of this project", and "The ribcage of the Turkana Boy (Homo erectus) is deeper, wider and shorter than seen in modern humans, with similarities to the ribcage of Neanderthals."  However, this is not surprising at all in our opinion: the anatomy of archaic Homo shows that they were no distance-runners as still often believed (without good evidence in my opinion), but were waterside and wetland dwellers who often waded bipedally and also frequently dived for shallow-water foods such as shellfish (which is extremely rich in brain-specific nutrients such as DHA), e.g. "The aquatic ape evolves: common misconceptions and unproven assumptions about the so-called Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" Human Evolution 28:237-266, 2013 (for an update and more recent references google "coastal dispersal of Pleistocene Homo 2018 Verhaegen"). Turkana Boy fossilized in mudstone amid reeds, swamp snails, catfish, aquatic turtles and hippo footprints, and most if not all other archaic Homo fossils were waterside or shallow aquatic, e.g. N.T. Roach et al. 2016 Scientific Reports 6: 26374 "Pleistocene footprints show intensive use of lake margin habitats by Homo erectus groups".

Thanks a lot for this very interesting article. Most likely, human colonization of coastal environments probably began already early-Pleistocene, when Homo erectus dispersed intercontinentally following the African and Indian Ocean coasts, islands and rivers, and even reached Java, helping explain Homo's drastic brain enlargement, which was made possible thanks to the abundant brain-specific nutrients such as DHA, iodine, taurin and oligo-elements in aquatic foods, for instance, see my paper in Human Evolution 28 p.237-266 "The aquatic ape evolves: common misconceptions and unproven assumptions about the so-called Aquatic Ape Hypothesis", or google "coastal dispersal Pleistocene Homo 2018 Verhaegen" and references therein.

Thanks a lot, Jacob. Yes, since our ancestors' coastal dispersal had perhaps not much to do with the australopithecines (which might be closer relatives of Gorilla or Pan than of Homo), we can only use "archaic Homo" fossils and their (Acheulean) artefacts? Genetic data suggests that our direct ancestors were absent from Africa between at least 4 and 3 Ma ("Lineage-specific expansions of retroviral insertions within the genomes of African great apes but not humans and orangutans" C. Yohn cs 2005 PLoS Biol 3:e110). Begin-Pleistocene (cf lower sea-levels?), "archaic" fossils (pachyosteosclerotic, which suggests shallow-diving) or their artefacts (esp. Acheulean) are found at Java c 1.6 Ma, Georgia 1.8 Ma, and diverse sites in China, possibly already 2.1 Ma ("Hominin occupation of the Chinese Loess Plateau since about 2.1 million years ago" Z. Zhu cs 2018 Nature 559: 608-612): had they already colonized southern (Eur)asian coasts during the Pliocene? Perhaps the Homo-Pan split might have happened c 5 Ma in the SE-African littoral forest along the Indian Ocean, google e.g. "Lucy was no human ancestor 2020 Verhaegen". The apparent absence of Pliocene "archaic" fossils might be due to poor fossilization chances (waves, tides, tsunamis, tectonics ...?) or very low population densities? In any case, there's still a lot to be discovered. Thanks for your answer!

Thanks, very interesting. I wonder: could parts of this model also be applied to the intercontinental dispersal of early-Pleistocene Homo? It has become clear by now that the apparently "fast" dispersal of "archaic" Homo (ergaster, erectus etc.) as far as Southeast-Asia (e.g. Java, China, the islands of Flores, Suwesi, Luzon) and the Mediterranean coasts and islands happened along the southern Eurasian coasts, islands and rivers (Coastal Dispersal Model, Munro 2010). A diet including the consumption of shallow-aquatic shellfish (rich in brain-specific nutrients such as DHA) can best explain the dramatic brain enlargement seen in Pleistocene archaic Homo (e.g. Cunnane 2005, google "coastal dispersal Pleistocene Homo Verhaegen" for refs).

Thanks for this article. Yes, the OWM/ape LCA (last common ancestor of catarrhine monkeys & hominoids) was an arboreal animal, different from both extant OWMs & extant hominoids (apes & humans). Whereas the New World monkeys probably almost exclusively remained arboreal, the OWMs seem to have became partly terrestrial & partly arboreal ("terrarboreal"), spending time on the ground & time in the branches, but the hominoids became partly aquatic & partly arboreal ("aquarboreal") in the swampy forests where they typically fossilized, spending time climbing vertically in the branches & time wading bipedally in the forest swamps, probably in search of AHV (aquatic herbaceous vergetation), possibly not unlike extant bonobos wading for waterlilies or lowland gorillas wading for papyrus sedges, frogbit or other floating herbs (see our 2002 TREE paper, see below). Google e.g. "bonobo wading" or "gorilla bai". That implies that the early hominoids were already "vertical", as still is the case in gibbons & siamangs (who have become vertical arm-swingers) as well as in humans (who became upright waders & walkers), whereas the Asian great apes became suspensory below-branchers (orangutans) and the African apes became knuckle-walking chimps, bonobos & gorillas. See our paper Verhaegen, Puech & Munro 2002 "Aquarboreal Ancestors?" Trends Ecol.Evol.17:210-217, or for an update google "two incredible logical mistakes 2019 verhaegen".