About the Authors

Yuri Kimura

ykimura@mail.smu.edu

Affiliation Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Louis L. Jacobs

Affiliation Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Thure E. Cerling

Affiliation Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America

Kevin T. Uno

Affiliation Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America

Kurt M. Ferguson

Affiliation Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States of America

Lawrence J. Flynn

Affiliation Peabody Museum and Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Rajeev Patnaik

Affiliation Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: YK LLJ TEC. Performed the experiments: YK KTU. Analyzed the data: YK LLJ TEC KTU KMF LJF. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LLJ TEC LJF RP. Wrote the paper: YK LLJ TEC KTU KMF LJF RP.