Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change.

Bibliographic Collection: 
APE
Publication Type: Journal Article
Authors: Sandom, Christopher; Faurby, Søren; Sandel, Brody; Svenning, Jens-Christian
Year of Publication: 2014
Journal: Proc Biol Sci
Volume: 281
Issue: 1787
Date Published: 2014 Jul 22
Publication Language: eng
ISSN: 1471-2954
Keywords: Animal Distribution, Animals, Climate Change, Extinction, Biological, Fossils, Geography, Human Activities, Humans, Mammals, Models, Theoretical, Paleontology, Species Specificity
Abstract:

The late Quaternary megafauna extinction was a severe global-scale event. Two factors, climate change and modern humans, have received broad support as the primary drivers, but their absolute and relative importance remains controversial. To date, focus has been on the extinction chronology of individual or small groups of species, specific geographical regions or macroscale studies at very coarse geographical and taxonomic resolution, limiting the possibility of adequately testing the proposed hypotheses. We present, to our knowledge, the first global analysis of this extinction based on comprehensive country-level data on the geographical distribution of all large mammal species (more than or equal to 10 kg) that have gone globally or continentally extinct between the beginning of the Last Interglacial at 132,000 years BP and the late Holocene 1000 years BP, testing the relative roles played by glacial-interglacial climate change and humans. We show that the severity of extinction is strongly tied to hominin palaeobiogeography, with at most a weak, Eurasia-specific link to climate change. This first species-level macroscale analysis at relatively high geographical resolution provides strong support for modern humans as the primary driver of the worldwide megafauna losses during the late Quaternary.

DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.3254
Alternate Journal: Proc. Biol. Sci.