Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia
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 w...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Nature Publishing Group
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/45000 |
| _version_ | 1848757160224227328 |
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| author | Saltré, F. Rodríguez-Rey, M. Brook, B. Johnson, C. Turney, C. Alroy, J. Cooper, A. Beeton, N. Bird, M. Fordham, D. Gillespie, R. Herrando-Pérez, S. Jacobs, Z. Miller, Gifford Nogués-Bravo, D. Prideaux, G. Roberts, R. Bradshaw, C. |
| author_facet | Saltré, F. Rodríguez-Rey, M. Brook, B. Johnson, C. Turney, C. Alroy, J. Cooper, A. Beeton, N. Bird, M. Fordham, D. Gillespie, R. Herrando-Pérez, S. Jacobs, Z. Miller, Gifford Nogués-Bravo, D. Prideaux, G. Roberts, R. Bradshaw, C. |
| author_sort | Saltré, F. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:23:40Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-45000 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T09:23:40Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-450002017-09-13T14:15:45Z Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia Saltré, F. Rodríguez-Rey, M. Brook, B. Johnson, C. Turney, C. Alroy, J. Cooper, A. Beeton, N. Bird, M. Fordham, D. Gillespie, R. Herrando-Pérez, S. Jacobs, Z. Miller, Gifford Nogués-Bravo, D. Prideaux, G. Roberts, R. Bradshaw, C. 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. 2016 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/45000 10.1038/ncomms10511 Nature Publishing Group unknown |
| spellingShingle | Saltré, F. Rodríguez-Rey, M. Brook, B. Johnson, C. Turney, C. Alroy, J. Cooper, A. Beeton, N. Bird, M. Fordham, D. Gillespie, R. Herrando-Pérez, S. Jacobs, Z. Miller, Gifford Nogués-Bravo, D. Prideaux, G. Roberts, R. Bradshaw, C. Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia |
| title | Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia |
| title_full | Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia |
| title_fullStr | Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia |
| title_full_unstemmed | Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia |
| title_short | Climate change not to blame for late Quaternary megafauna extinctions in Australia |
| title_sort | climate change not to blame for late quaternary megafauna extinctions in australia |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/45000 |