@article{02e29d0f0f8c4934b7b74cdc14c4a491,
title = "Late Pleistocene records of speleothem stable isotopic compositions from Pinnacle Point on the South African south coast",
abstract = "Highly resolved, well-dated paleoclimate records from the southern South African coast are needed to contextualize the evolution of the highly diverse extratropical plant communities of the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) and to assess the environmental impacts on early human hunter-gatherers. We present new speleothem stable oxygen and carbon isotope ratios (δ18Oc and δ13C) from two caves at Pinnacle Point, South Africa, covering the time between 330 and 43 ka. Composite δ18Oc and δ13C records were constructed for Staircase Cave and PP29 by combining all stable isotope analyses into a single time series and smoothing by a 3-point running mean. δ18Oc and δ13C values record changes in rainfall seasonality and the proportions of C3 and C4 plants in the vegetation, respectively. We show that in general increased summer rainfall brought about a wider spread of C4 grasses and retreat of the C3 plant-dominated GCFR communities. The occurrence of summer rainfall on the southern coast of South Africa was linked to total rainfall amounts in the interior region through tropical temperate troughs. These rainfall systems shifted the southern coastal climate toward more summer (winter) rainfall when precession was high (low) and/or the westerlies were in a northern (southern) position.",
keywords = "Carbon isotopes, Oxygen isotopes, South Africa, Speleothem",
author = "Kerstin Braun and Miryam Bar-Matthews and Alan Matthews and Avner Ayalon and Cowling, {Richard M.} and Panagiotis Karkanas and Fisher, {Erich C.} and Kelsey Dyez and Tami Zilberman and Marean, {Curtis W.}",
note = "Funding Information: We thank Philip Hopley and one anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments, which helped improve this publication. We thank the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) and School of Human Evolution and Social Change (SHESC) staff at Arizona State University (ASU) and the Mossel Bay Archaeology Project (MAP) staff for their assistance, the Dias Museum for field facilities, South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and Heritage Western Cape (HWC) for permits, and the Geological Survey of Israel for research support. We acknowledge funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Marie Curie People program FP7/2007–2013 through funding of the Initial Training Network “GATEWAYS” (http://www. gateways itn.eu) under the grant number 238512. This research was further funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (to C.W. Marean, BCS-0524087 and BCS-1138073), the Hyde Family Foundations and the IHO at ASU, and the John Templeton Foundation to the IHO at ASU (grant ID 48952). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of these funding organizations. Funding Information: We thank Philip Hopley and one anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments, which helped improve this publication.We thank the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) and School of Human Evolution and Social Change (SHESC) staff at Arizona State University (ASU) and the Mossel Bay Archaeology Project (MAP) staff for their assistance, the Dias Museum for field facilities, South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and Heritage Western Cape (HWC) for permits, and the Geological Survey of Israel for research support. We acknowledge funding from the European Commission Seventh Framework Marie Curie People program FP7/2007-2013 through funding of the Initial Training Network {"}GATEWAYS{"} (http://www. gateways itn.eu) under the grant number 238512. This research was further funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (to C.W. Marean, BCS-0524087 and BCS-1138073), the Hyde Family Foundations and the IHO at ASU, and the John Templeton Foundation to the IHO at ASU (grant ID 48952). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of these funding organizations. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 University of Washington. Published by Cambridge University Press.",
year = "2019",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1017/qua.2018.61",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "91",
pages = "265--288",
journal = "Quaternary Research (United States)",
issn = "0033-5894",
publisher = "Academic Press Inc.",
number = "1",
}