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Humans rather than climate the primary cause of Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in Australia. Público Deposited

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https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/articles/fn106z59c
Abstract
  • Environmental histories that span the last full glacial cycle and are representative of regional change in Australia are scarce, hampering assessment of environmental change preceding and concurrent with human dispersal on the continent ca. 47,000 years ago. Here we present a continuous 150,000-year record offshore south-western Australia and identify the timing of two critical late Pleistocene events: wide-scale ecosystem change and regional megafaunal population collapse. We establish that substantial changes in vegetation and fire regime occurred ∼70,000 years ago under a climate much drier than today. We record high levels of the dung fungus Sporormiella, a proxy for herbivore biomass, from 150,000 to 45,000 years ago, then a marked decline indicating megafaunal population collapse, from 45,000 to 43,100 years ago, placing the extinctions within 4,000 years of human dispersal across Australia. These findings rule out climate change, and implicate humans, as the primary extinction cause.
Creator
Date Issued
  • 2017-01-20
Academic Affiliation
Journal Title
Journal Volume
  • 8
File Extent
  • 14142-14142
Subject
Última modificación
  • 2019-12-05
Identifier
  • PubMed ID: 28106043
Resource Type
Declaración de derechos
DOI
ISSN
  • 2041-1723
Language

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