Africa's fossil record of late Cenozoic mammals documents considerable ecological and evolutionary changes through time. Here, we synthesize those changes in the context of the mechanisms proposed to account for them, including bottom-up (e.g., climate change) and top-down (e.g., hominin impacts) processes. In doing so, we (a) examine how the incompleteness of the fossil record and the varied spatiotemporal scales of the evidence complicate efforts to establish cause-effect relationships; (b) evaluate hypothesized drivers of long-term ecological and evolutionary change, highlighting key unknowns; and (c) synthesize major taxonomic and functional trends through time (e.g., downsizing of faunal communities) considering the proposed drivers. Throughout our review, we point to unresolved questions and highlight research avenues that have potential to inform on the processes that have shaped the history of what are today the most diverse remaining large mammal communities on Earth.▪The study of late Cenozoic African mammal communities is intertwined with questions about the context, causes, and consequences of hominin evolution.▪The fossil record documents major functional (e.g., loss of megaherbivores) and taxonomic (e.g., rise of the Bovidae) changes over the past ∼7 Myr.▪Complexities inherent to the fossil record have made it difficult to identify the processes that drove ecological and evolutionary changes.▪Unanswered questions about the drivers of faunal change and the functioning of past ecosystems represent promising future research directions.

中文翻译：

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非洲晚新生代动物区系和生态变化


非洲新生代晚期哺乳动物的化石记录记录了随着时间的推移发生的相当大的生态和进化变化。在这里，我们在提出解释这些变化的机制的背景下综合这些变化，包括自下而上（例如，气候变化）和自上而下（例如，古人类影响）过程。在此过程中，我们（a）研究化石记录的不完整性和证据的不同时空尺度如何使建立因果关系的努力变得复杂； (b) 评估长期生态和进化变化的假设驱动因素，强调关键的未知因素； (c) 考虑拟议的驱动因素，综合随时间变化的主要分类和功能趋势（例如动物群落规模缩小）。在我们的整个审查中，我们指出了未解决的问题，并强调了有潜力了解塑造当今地球上最多样化的剩余大型哺乳动物群落历史的过程的研究途径。▪对新生代晚期非洲哺乳动物群落的研究是与人类进化的背景、原因和后果的问题交织在一起。▪化石记录记录了过去〜7 Myr的主要功能（例如，大型食草动物的消失）和分类学（例如，牛科动物的兴起）变化。▪固有的复杂性化石记录的变化使得识别驱动生态和进化变化的过程变得困难。▪关于动物区系变化的驱动因素和过去生态系统功能的未解答的问题代表了有希望的未来研究方向。