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Plio-Pleistocene global climate change is believed to have had an important influence on local habitats and early human evolution in Africa. Responses of hominin lineages to climate change have been difficult to test, however, because this procedure requires well documented evidence for connections between global climate and hominin environment. Through high-resolution pollen data from Hadar, Ethiopia, we show that the hominin Australopithecus afarensis accommodated to substantial environmental variability between 3.4 and 2.9 million years ago. A large biome shift, up to 5°C cooling, and a 200- to 300-mm/yr rainfall increase occurred just before 3.3 million years ago, which is consistent with a global marine δ¹⁸O isotopic shift.