African savannah grasslands initially proliferated in the late Miocene due to declining atmospheric CO2, rather than previously proposed regional climate drying. Supplanting previous woodland vegetation due to photosynthetic adaptations, these grasslands set the stage for subsequent mammalian evolutionary trends on the continent.
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Cawthra, H. Emergence of the African savannah. Nat. Geosci. 12, 588–589 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0412-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0412-9
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