Grasslands

Synonyms

Pasture; Plain; Prairie; Savannah

Definition

A grassy, large open area, often used for grazing, where grasslike vegetation is often the dominant form of plant life.

Introduction

As early hominins developed into eventual Homo sapiens, a major step in their change in biological structure and the formation of bipedal locomotion was their change in environment. These early hominins transitioned from living in trees as modern primates do to moving down to savannahs and, as a result, changing their physiological structure through the gradual process of evolution to adapt to hunting and surviving on the African savannah. The savannah, or grasslands, provided a major change from hominins’ previous environment, including climate, elevation, and prey, among various other differences that worked in congruence to illicit change in these hominins – among those changes being bipedal locomotion.

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