Word: savanna
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...animals absorbed from the fierce tropical sun. Still others believe bipedalism freed the hands for carrying food or children over long distances. Such explanations appear to share a common flaw. A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that the earliest hominids did not, in fact, move out onto the savanna. The fossils they left behind were found in areas that were once densely wooded. Apparently they learned to walk in the relative safety of the forests while living next to their cousins, the apes...
...evolutionary success -- and the subsequent thriving of the genus Homo as well -- was tied to climate changes taking place. About 2.5 million to 2.7 million years ago, an ice age sent global temperatures plummeting as much as 20F, prompting the conversion of moist African woodland into much drier, open savanna...
...crew members were chronically overworked and, until the oxygen supply was replenished after 16 months, had less and less energy to work with. To liven up the drudgery, they used any excuse to celebrate: a beach party near the ocean habitat, a picnic on a blanket in the savanna, a dress-up party in clothes suddenly two sizes...
...myth of "man the hunter" has flatteringly obscured our true prehistory as prey. According to the myth, "man" climbed down from the trees one day, strode out into the savanna with a sharpened stick in his hand and started slaughtering the local ungulates. After that, supposedly, the only violence prehumans had to worry about was from other stick-wielding bipeds like themselves. Thus some punctured australopithecine skulls found in Africa were at first chalked up to "intentional armed assault" -- until someone pointed out that the punctures precisely fit the tooth gap of the leopard...
...results are spectacular. The structure, built on a slope, is dominated by a soaring Amazonian rain forest, lush with 300 species of plants. At its periphery, tree ferns and bromeliads flank a stream that leads to a mountainside flood-plain forest and an open vista of tropical savanna. There, plants from Africa, Australia and South America bask in a less humid atmosphere, where bees and hummingbirds help pollinate plants and a colony of termites aids in the decomposition of dying material...