Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia.

Saltré, Frédérik, Rodríguez-Ray, Mara, Brook, Barry W., Johnson, Christopher N., Turney, Chris S.M., Alroy, John, Cooper, Alan, Beeton, Nicholas, Bird, Michael I., Fordham, Damien A., Gillespie, Richard, Herrando-Pérez, Salvador, Jacobs, Zenobia, Miller, Gifford H., Nogués-Bravo, David, Prideaux, Gavin J., Roberts, Richard G., and Bradshaw, Corey J.A. (2016) Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia. Nature Communications, 7. 10511. pp. 1-7.

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Abstract

Late Quaternary megafauna extinctions impoverished mammalian diversity worldwide. The causes of these extinctions in Australia are most controversial but essential to resolve, because this continent-wide event presaged similar losses that occurred thousands of years later on other continents. Here we apply a rigorous metadata analysis and new ensemble-hindcasting approach to 659 Australian megafauna fossil ages. When coupled with analysis of several high-resolution climate records, we show that megafaunal extinctions were broadly synchronous among genera and independent of climate aridity and variability in Australia over the last 120,000 years. Our results reject climate change as the primary driver of megafauna extinctions in the world’s most controversial context, and instead estimate that the megafauna disappeared Australia-wide ∼13,500 years after human arrival, with shorter periods of coexistence in some regions. This is the first comprehensive approach to incorporate uncertainty in fossil ages, extinction timing and climatology, to quantify mechanisms of prehistorical extinctions.

Item ID: 47992
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 2041-1723
Keywords: quaternary, megafauna, chronology
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Funders: University of Adelaide, Australian Research Council (ARC)
Projects and Grants: ARC Discovery Project grant DP130103842, ARC Future Fellowship FT110100306, ARC Future Fellowship FT100100200, ARC Future Fellowship FT130101728, ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship FL140100044, ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship FL140100260, ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship FL130100116, ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship FL100100195
Research Data: http://dx.doi.org/10.4227/05/564E6209C4FE8
Date Deposited: 23 Mar 2017 22:53
FoR Codes: 43 HISTORY, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY > 4301 Archaeology > 430101 Archaeological science @ 100%
SEO Codes: 97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970121 Expanding Knowledge in History and Archaeology @ 100%
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