This book focuses on how climatic change during the last fifteen million years—especially the last three million—has affected human evolution and other evolutionary events. Leading evolutionists and physical geologists from all over the world—authorities on such subjects as paleoceanography, palynology, mammalian paleontology, and paleoanthropology—address the relationship between climatic and biotic evolution, presenting and integrating the most up-to-date research in their fields.

Among the subjects discussed are: global and regional climatic changes; tectonism and its effects on climate; the evolution of biomes and mammals; the ways climate might have influenced the origins of hominid species; and the evolution of hominid morphologies and behaviors. The book draws on the comparatively rich data base of the Late Neogene and includes many new data sets and hypotheses on paleoclimatic changes and on floral and mammalian evolution.