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Journal articles on the topic 'Megafaunal extinctions'

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Published: 10 December 2022

Last updated: 28 January 2023

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1

Marshall, Charles R., Emily L. Lindsey, Natalia A. Villavicencio, and Anthony D. Barnosky. "A Quantitative Model for Distinguishing Between Climate Change, Human Impact, and Their Synergistic Interaction as Drivers of the Late Quaternary Megafaunal Extinctions." Paleontological Society Papers 21 (October 2015): 1–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1089332600002941.

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A simple quantitative approach is presented for determining the relative importance of climate change and human impact in driving late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions. This method is designed to determine whether climate change or human impact alone can account for these extinctions, or whether both were important, acting independently (additively) and/or synergistically (multiplicatively). This approach is applied to the megafaunal extinction in the Última Esperanza region of southern Chile. In this region, there is a complex pattern of extinction. Records of environmental change include temperature proxies and pollen records that capture the transition from cold grasslands to warmer, moister forests, as well as evidence of initial human arrival. Uncertainty in extinction times and time of human arrival complicates the analysis, as does uncertainty about the size of local human populations, and the nature, strength, and persistence of their impacts through the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Results of the Ultima Esperanza analysis were equivocal, with evidence for climate- and human-driven extinction, with each operating alone or additively. The results depend on the exact timing of extinctions and human arrival, and assumptions about the kinds of pressures humans put on the megafauna. There was little evidence for positive synergistic effects, while the unexpected possibility of negative synergistic interactions arose in some scenarios. Application of this quantitative approach highlights the need for higher precision dating of the extinctions and human arrival, and provides a platform for sharpening our understanding of these megafaunal extinctions.

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2

Emery-Wetherell, Meaghan M., Brianna K. McHorse, and Edward Byrd Davis. "Spatially explicit analysis sheds new light on the Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in North America." Paleobiology 43, no. 4 (August 29, 2017): 642–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2017.15.

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AbstractThe late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions may have been the first extinctions directly related to human activity, but in North America the close temporal proximity of human arrival and the Younger Dryas climate event has hindered efforts to identify the ultimate extinction cause. Previous work evaluating the roles of climate change and human activity in the North American megafaunal extinction has been stymied by a reliance on geographic binning, yielding contradictory results among researchers. We used a fine-scale geospatial approach in combination with 95 megafaunal last-appearance and 75 human first-appearance radiocarbon dates to evaluate the North American megafaunal extinction. We used kriging to create interpolated first- and last-appearance surfaces from calibrated radiocarbon dates in combination with their geographic autocorrelation. We found substantial evidence for overlap between megafaunal and human populations in many but not all areas, in some cases exceeding 3000 years of predicted overlap. We also found that overlap was highly regional: megafauna had last appearances in Alaska before humans first appeared, but did not have last appearances in the Great Lakes region until several thousand years after the first recorded human appearances. Overlap in the Great Lakes region exceeds uncertainty in radiocarbon measurements or methodological uncertainty and would be even greater with sampling-derived confidence intervals. The kriged maps of last megafaunal occurrence are consistent with climate as a primary driver in some areas, but we cannot eliminate human influence from all regions. The late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction was highly variable in timing and duration of human overlap across the continent, and future analyses should take these regional trends into account.

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3

Beck, Michael W. "On discerning the cause of late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions." Paleobiology 22, no. 1 (1996): 91–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0094837300016043.

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I examine the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions by testing the only extinction model with strong a priori predictions, the blitzkrieg model (Martin 1973; Mosimann and Martin 1975). I first test an assumption of the blitzkrieg and other extinction models that the megafaunal extinctions occurred in the terminal Wisconsin (12-10 Ka). This assumption has been disputed by Grayson (1989, 1991), but I find that both a reanalysis of Grayson's data and an analysis of new reliable data support a terminal Wisconsin extinction.The blitzkrieg model predicts that the ranges of megafauna in North America were constricted as the semicircular front of hunters moved southeastward; hence the extinctions should be time-transgressive from northwest to southeast. I test this prediction in three separate analyses that examine (1) the location of terminal sites for each taxon relative to all their other late Wisconsin fossil sites, (2) the location of terminal sites for each taxon relative to all their other reliably dated late Wisconsin fossil sites, and (3) the spatio-temporal pattern of all the reliably dated terminal Wisconsin sites without regard to taxonomy. The geographic distribution of the megafaunal remains does not support the blitzkrieg hypothesis in any of the three analyses. Moreover, all of the patterns in the data are in a direction opposite to that predicted by the blitzkrieg hypothesis. I examine how these conclusions affect both climatic and predation models, particularly in relation to the testability of other extinction hypotheses.

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4

Metcalf, Jessica L., Chris Turney, Ross Barnett, Fabiana Martin, Sarah C. Bray, Julia T. Vilstrup, Ludovic Orlando, et al. "Synergistic roles of climate warming and human occupation in Patagonian megafaunal extinctions during the Last Deglaciation." Science Advances 2, no. 6 (June 2016): e1501682. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1501682.

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The causes of Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions (60,000 to 11,650 years ago, hereafter 60 to 11.65 ka) remain contentious, with major phases coinciding with both human arrival and climate change around the world. The Americas provide a unique opportunity to disentangle these factors as human colonization took place over a narrow time frame (~15 to 14.6 ka) but during contrasting temperature trends across each continent. Unfortunately, limited data sets in South America have so far precluded detailed comparison. We analyze genetic and radiocarbon data from 89 and 71 Patagonian megafaunal bones, respectively, more than doubling the high-quality Pleistocene megafaunal radiocarbon data sets from the region. We identify a narrow megafaunal extinction phase 12,280 ± 110 years ago, some 1 to 3 thousand years after initial human presence in the area. Although humans arrived immediately prior to a cold phase, the Antarctic Cold Reversal stadial, megafaunal extinctions did not occur until the stadial finished and the subsequent warming phase commenced some 1 to 3 thousand years later. The increased resolution provided by the Patagonian material reveals that the sequence of climate and extinction events in North and South America were temporally inverted, but in both cases, megafaunal extinctions did not occur until human presence and climate warming coincided. Overall, metapopulation processes involving subpopulation connectivity on a continental scale appear to have been critical for megafaunal species survival of both climate change and human impacts.

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5

Mann, Daniel H., Pamela Groves, Richard E. Reanier, Benjamin V. Gaglioti, Michael L. Kunz, and Beth Shapiro. "Life and extinction of megafauna in the ice-age Arctic." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 46 (November 2, 2015): 14301–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516573112.

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Understanding the population dynamics of megafauna that inhabited the mammoth steppe provides insights into the causes of extinctions during both the terminal Pleistocene and today. Our study area is Alaska's North Slope, a place where humans were rare when these extinctions occurred. After developing a statistical approach to remove the age artifacts caused by radiocarbon calibration from a large series of dated megafaunal bones, we compare the temporal patterns of bone abundance with climate records. Megafaunal abundance tracked ice age climate, peaking during transitions from cold to warm periods. These results suggest that a defining characteristic of the mammoth steppe was its temporal instability and imply that regional extinctions followed by population reestablishment from distant refugia were characteristic features of ice-age biogeography at high latitudes. It follows that long-distance dispersal was crucial for the long-term persistence of megafaunal species living in the Arctic. Such dispersal was only possible when their rapidly shifting range lands were geographically interconnected. The end of the last ice age was fatally unique because the geographic ranges of arctic megafauna became permanently fragmented after stable, interglacial climate engendered the spread of peatlands at the same time that rising sea level severed former dispersal routes.

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6

Hixon, Sean W., Kristina G. Douglass, Brooke E. Crowley, Lucien Marie Aimé Rakotozafy, Geoffrey Clark, Atholl Anderson, Simon Haberle, et al. "Late Holocene spread of pastoralism coincides with endemic megafaunal extinction on Madagascar." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 288, no. 1955 (July 21, 2021): 20211204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1204.

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Recently expanded estimates for when humans arrived on Madagascar (up to approximately 10 000 years ago) highlight questions about the causes of the island's relatively late megafaunal extinctions (approximately 2000–500 years ago). Introduced domesticated animals could have contributed to extinctions, but the arrival times and past diets of exotic animals are poorly known. To conduct the first explicit test of the potential for competition between introduced livestock and extinct endemic megafauna in southern and western Madagascar, we generated new radiocarbon and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from the bone collagen of introduced ungulates (zebu cattle, ovicaprids and bushpigs, n = 66) and endemic megafauna (pygmy hippopotamuses, giant tortoises and elephant birds, n = 68), and combined these data with existing data from endemic megafauna ( n = 282, including giant lemurs). Radiocarbon dates confirm that introduced and endemic herbivores briefly overlapped chronologically in this region between 1000 and 800 calibrated years before present (cal BP). Moreover, stable isotope data suggest that goats, tortoises and hippos had broadly similar diets or exploited similar habitats. These data support the potential for both direct and indirect forms of competition between introduced and endemic herbivores. We argue that competition with introduced herbivores, mediated by opportunistic hunting by humans and exacerbated by environmental change, contributed to the late extinction of endemic megafauna on Madagascar.

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7

Swift, Jillian A., Michael Bunce, Joe Dortch, Kristina Douglass, J. Tyler Faith, James A. Fellows Yates, Judith Field, et al. "Micro Methods for Megafauna: Novel Approaches to Late Quaternary Extinctions and Their Contributions to Faunal Conservation in the Anthropocene." BioScience 69, no. 11 (October 2, 2019): 877–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz105.

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Abstract Drivers of Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions are relevant to modern conservation policy in a world of growing human population density, climate change, and faunal decline. Traditional debates tend toward global solutions, blaming either dramatic climate change or dispersals of Homo sapiens to new regions. Inherent limitations to archaeological and paleontological data sets often require reliance on scant, poorly resolved lines of evidence. However, recent developments in scientific technologies allow for more local, context-specific approaches. In the present article, we highlight how developments in five such methodologies (radiocarbon approaches, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA, ancient proteomics, microscopy) have helped drive detailed analysis of specific megafaunal species, their particular ecological settings, and responses to new competitors or predators, climate change, and other external phenomena. The detailed case studies of faunal community composition, extinction chronologies, and demographic trends enabled by these methods examine megafaunal extinctions at scales appropriate for practical understanding of threats against particular species in their habitats today.

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8

Onstein, Renske E., William J. Baker, Thomas L. P. Couvreur, Søren Faurby, Leonel Herrera-Alsina, Jens-Christian Svenning, and W. Daniel Kissling. "To adapt or go extinct? The fate of megafaunal palm fruits under past global change." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 285, no. 1880 (June 13, 2018): 20180882. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0882.

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Past global change may have forced animal-dispersed plants with megafaunal fruits to adapt or go extinct, but these processes have remained unexplored at broad spatio-temporal scales. Here, we combine phylogenetic, distributional and fruit size data for more than 2500 palm (Arecaceae) species in a time-slice diversification analysis to quantify how extinction and adaptation have changed over deep time. Our results indicate that extinction rates of palms with megafaunal fruits have increased in the New World since the onset of the Quaternary (2.6 million years ago). In contrast, Old World palms show a Quaternary increase in transition rates towards evolving small fruits from megafaunal fruits. We suggest that Quaternary climate oscillations and concurrent habitat fragmentation and defaunation of megafaunal frugivores in the New World have reduced seed dispersal distances and geographical ranges of palms with megafaunal fruits, resulting in their extinction. The increasing adaptation to smaller fruits in the Old World could reflect selection for seed dispersal by ocean-crossing frugivores (e.g. medium-sized birds and bats) to colonize Indo-Pacific islands against a background of Quaternary sea-level fluctuations. Our macro-evolutionary results suggest that megafaunal fruits are increasingly being lost from tropical ecosystems, either due to extinctions or by adapting to smaller fruit sizes.

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9

Pires, Mathias M., Paul L. Koch, Richard A. Fariña, Marcus A. M. de Aguiar, Sérgio F. dos Reis, and Paulo R. Guimarães. "Pleistocene megafaunal interaction networks became more vulnerable after human arrival." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282, no. 1814 (September 7, 2015): 20151367. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.1367.

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The end of the Pleistocene was marked by the extinction of almost all large land mammals worldwide except in Africa. Although the debate on Pleistocene extinctions has focused on the roles of climate change and humans, the impact of perturbations depends on properties of ecological communities, such as species composition and the organization of ecological interactions. Here, we combined palaeoecological and ecological data, food-web models and community stability analysis to investigate if differences between Pleistocene and modern mammalian assemblages help us understand why the megafauna died out in the Americas while persisting in Africa. We show Pleistocene and modern assemblages share similar network topology, but differences in richness and body size distributions made Pleistocene communities significantly more vulnerable to the effects of human arrival. The structural changes promoted by humans in Pleistocene networks would have increased the likelihood of unstable dynamics, which may favour extinction cascades in communities facing extrinsic perturbations. Our findings suggest that the basic aspects of the organization of ecological communities may have played an important role in major extinction events in the past. Knowledge of community-level properties and their consequences to dynamics may be critical to understand past and future extinctions.

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10

COMANDINI, ORNELLA, and ANDREA C. RINALDI. "Tracing megafaunal extinctions with dung fungal spores." Mycologist 18, no. 4 (November 2004): 140–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0269915x0400401x.

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11

Monjeau, J. A., B. Araujo, G. Abramson, M. N. Kuperman, M. F. Laguna, and J. L. Lanata. "The controversy space on Quaternary megafaunal extinctions." Quaternary International 431 (February 2017): 194–204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.10.022.

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12

Brault, M. O., L. A. Mysak, H. D. Matthews, and C. T. Simmons. "Assessing the impact of late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on global vegetation and climate." Climate of the Past 9, no. 4 (August 2, 2013): 1761–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-1761-2013.

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Abstract. The end of the Pleistocene was a turning point for the Earth system as climate gradually emerged from millennia of severe glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere. The deglacial climate change coincided with an unprecedented decline in many species of Pleistocene megafauna, including the near-total eradication of the woolly mammoth. Due to an herbivorous diet that presumably involved large-scale tree grazing, the mammoth extinction has been associated with the rapid expansion of dwarf deciduous trees in Siberia and Beringia, thus potentially contributing to the changing climate of the period. In this study, we use the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM) to simulate the possible effects of these extinctions on climate during the latest deglacial period. We have explored various hypothetical scenarios of forest expansion in the northern high latitudes, quantifying the biogeophysical effects in terms of changes in surface albedo and air temperature. These scenarios include a Maximum Impact Scenario (MIS) which simulates the greatest possible post-extinction reforestation in the model, and sensitivity tests which investigate the timing of extinction, the fraction of trees grazed by mammoths, and the southern extent of mammoth habitats. We also show the results of a simulation with free atmospheric CO2-carbon cycle interactions. For the MIS, we obtained a surface albedo increase and global warming of 0.006 and 0.175 °C, respectively. Less extreme scenarios produced smaller global mean temperature changes, though local warming in some locations exceeded 0.3 °C even in the more realistic extinction scenarios. In the free CO2 simulation, the biogeophysical-induced warming was amplified by a biogeochemical effect, whereby the replacement of high-latitude tundra with shrub forest led to a release of soil carbon to the atmosphere and a small atmospheric CO2 increase. Overall, our results suggest the potential for a small, though non-trivial, effect of megafaunal extinctions on Pleistocene climate.

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13

Kistler, Logan, Lee A. Newsom, Timothy M. Ryan, Andrew C. Clarke, Bruce D. Smith, and George H. Perry. "Gourds and squashes (Cucurbita spp.) adapted to megafaunal extinction and ecological anachronism through domestication." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 49 (November 16, 2015): 15107–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516109112.

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The genus Cucurbita (squashes, pumpkins, gourds) contains numerous domesticated lineages with ancient New World origins. It was broadly distributed in the past but has declined to the point that several of the crops’ progenitor species are scarce or unknown in the wild. We hypothesize that Holocene ecological shifts and megafaunal extinctions severely impacted wild Cucurbita, whereas their domestic counterparts adapted to changing conditions via symbiosis with human cultivators. First, we used high-throughput sequencing to analyze complete plastid genomes of 91 total Cucurbita samples, comprising ancient (n = 19), modern wild (n = 30), and modern domestic (n = 42) taxa. This analysis demonstrates independent domestication in eastern North America, evidence of a previously unknown pathway to domestication in northeastern Mexico, and broad archaeological distributions of taxa currently unknown in the wild. Further, sequence similarity between distant wild populations suggests recent fragmentation. Collectively, these results point to wild-type declines coinciding with widespread domestication. Second, we hypothesize that the disappearance of large herbivores struck a critical ecological blow against wild Cucurbita, and we take initial steps to consider this hypothesis through cross-mammal analyses of bitter taste receptor gene repertoires. Directly, megafauna consumed Cucurbita fruits and dispersed their seeds; wild Cucurbita were likely left without mutualistic dispersal partners in the Holocene because they are unpalatable to smaller surviving mammals with more bitter taste receptor genes. Indirectly, megafauna maintained mosaic-like landscapes ideal for Cucurbita, and vegetative changes following the megafaunal extinctions likely crowded out their disturbed-ground niche. Thus, anthropogenic landscapes provided favorable growth habitats and willing dispersal partners in the wake of ecological upheaval.

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14

Collins, Catherine J., Nicolas J. Rawlence, Stefan Prost, Christian N. K. Anderson, Michael Knapp, R. Paul Scofield, Bruce C. Robertson, et al. "Extinction and recolonization of coastal megafauna following human arrival in New Zealand." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281, no. 1786 (July 7, 2014): 20140097. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0097.

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Extinctions can dramatically reshape biological communities. As a case in point, ancient mass extinction events apparently facilitated dramatic new evolutionary radiations of surviving lineages. However, scientists have yet to fully understand the consequences of more recent biological upheaval, such as the megafaunal extinctions that occurred globally over the past 50 kyr. New Zealand was the world's last large landmass to be colonized by humans, and its exceptional archaeological record documents a vast number of vertebrate extinctions in the immediate aftermath of Polynesian arrival approximately AD 1280. This recently colonized archipelago thus presents an outstanding opportunity to test for rapid biological responses to extinction. Here, we use ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis to show that extinction of an endemic sea lion lineage ( Phocarctos spp.) apparently facilitated a subsequent northward range expansion of a previously subantarctic-limited lineage. This finding parallels a similar extinction–replacement event in penguins ( Megadyptes spp.). In both cases, an endemic mainland clade was completely eliminated soon after human arrival, and then replaced by a genetically divergent clade from the remote subantarctic region, all within the space of a few centuries. These data suggest that ecological and demographic processes can play a role in constraining lineage distributions, even for highly dispersive species, and highlight the potential for dynamic biological responses to extinction.

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Forster, Michael A. "Self-organised instability and megafaunal extinctions in Australia." Oikos 103, no. 1 (October 2003): 235–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1034/j.1600-0706.2003.12557.x.

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16

Tóth, Anikó B., S. Kathleen Lyons, W. Andrew Barr, Anna K. Behrensmeyer, Jessica L. Blois, René Bobe, Matt Davis, et al. "Reorganization of surviving mammal communities after the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction." Science 365, no. 6459 (September 19, 2019): 1305–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw1605.

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Large mammals are at high risk of extinction globally. To understand the consequences of their demise for community assembly, we tracked community structure through the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in North America. We decomposed the effects of biotic and abiotic factors by analyzing co-occurrence within the mutual ranges of species pairs. Although shifting climate drove an increase in niche overlap, co-occurrence decreased, signaling shifts in biotic interactions. Furthermore, the effect of abiotic factors on co-occurrence remained constant over time while the effect of biotic factors decreased. Biotic factors apparently played a key role in continental-scale community assembly before the extinctions. Specifically, large mammals likely promoted co-occurrence in the Pleistocene, and their loss contributed to the modern assembly pattern in which co-occurrence frequently falls below random expectations.

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17

Davis, Matt. "What North America's skeleton crew of megafauna tells us about community disassembly." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284, no. 1846 (January 11, 2017): 20162116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2016.2116.

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Functional trait diversity is increasingly used to model future changes in community structure despite a poor understanding of community disassembly's effects on functional diversity. By tracking the functional diversity of the North American large mammal fauna through the End-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction and up to the present, I show that contrary to expectations, functionally unique species are no more likely to go extinct than functionally redundant species. This makes total functional richness loss no worse than expected given similar taxonomic richness declines. However, where current species sit in functional space relative to pre-anthropogenic baselines is not random and likely explains ecosystem functional changes better than total functional richness declines. Prehistoric extinctions have left many extant species functionally isolated and future extinctions will cause even more rapid drops in functional richness.

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18

Brook, B. W., and D. M. J. S. Bowman. "Explaining the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions: Models, chronologies, and assumptions." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99, no. 23 (November 4, 2002): 14624–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.232126899.

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19

OWEN-SMITH, NORMAN. "Megafaunal Extinctions: The Conservation Message from 11,000 Years B.P." Conservation Biology 3, no. 4 (December 1989): 405–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.1989.tb00246.x.

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20

Ripple, William J., and Blaire Van Valkenburgh. "Linking Top-down Forces to the Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions." BioScience 60, no. 7 (July 2010): 516–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/bio.2010.60.7.7.

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21

Field, Judith, Stephen Wroe, Clive N. Trueman, Jillian Garvey, and Simon Wyatt-Spratt. "Looking for the archaeological signature in Australian Megafaunal extinctions." Quaternary International 285 (February 2013): 76–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2011.04.013.

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22

Cosgrove, Richard, Judith Field, Jillian Garvey, Joan Brenner-Coltrain, Albert Goede, Bethan Charles, Steve Wroe, et al. "Overdone overkill – the archaeological perspective on Tasmanian megafaunal extinctions." Journal of Archaeological Science 37, no. 10 (October 2010): 2486–503. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2010.05.009.

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23

Diamond, Jared M. "Quaternary megafaunal extinctions: Variations on a theme by paganini." Journal of Archaeological Science 16, no. 2 (March 1989): 167–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0305-4403(89)90064-2.

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24

Turvey, S. T., and C. L. Risley. "Modelling the extinction of Steller's sea cow." Biology Letters 2, no. 1 (December 19, 2005): 94–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0415.

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Steller's sea cow, a giant sirenian discovered in 1741 and extinct by 1768, is one of the few megafaunal mammal species to have died out during the historical period. The species is traditionally considered to have been exterminated by ‘blitzkrieg’-style direct overharvesting for food, but it has also been proposed that its extinction resulted from a sea urchin population explosion triggered by extirpation of local sea otter populations that eliminated the shallow-water kelps on which sea cows fed. Hunting records from eighteenth century Russian expeditions to the Commander Islands, in conjunction with life-history data extrapolated from dugongs, permit modelling of sea cow extinction dynamics. Sea cows were massively and wastefully overexploited, being hunted at over seven times the sustainable limit, and suggesting that the initial Bering Island sea cow population must have been higher than suggested by previous researchers to allow the species to survive even until 1768. Environmental changes caused by sea otter declines are unlikely to have contributed to this extinction event. This indicates that megafaunal extinctions can be effected by small bands of hunters using pre-industrial technologies, and highlights the catastrophic impact of wastefulness when overexploiting resources mistakenly perceived as ‘infinite’.

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Brault, M. O., L. A. Mysak, H. D. Matthews, and C. T. Simmons. "Assessing the impact of late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on global vegetation and climate." Climate of the Past Discussions 9, no. 1 (January 21, 2013): 435–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/cpd-9-435-2013.

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Abstract. The end of the Pleistocene marked a turning point for the Earth system as climate gradually emerged from millennia of severe glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere. It is widely acknowledged that the deglacial climate change coincided with an unprecedented decline in many species of large terrestrial mammals, including the near-total eradication of the woolly mammoth. Due to an herbivorous diet that presumably involved large-scale tree grazing, the mammoth expansion would have accelerated the expansion of dwarf deciduous trees in Siberia and Beringia, thus contributing to the changing climate of the period. In this study, we use the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM) to simulate the possible effects of megafaunal extinctions on Pleistocene climate change. We have explored various hypothetical scenarios of forest expansion in the Northern Continents, quantifying the regional and global biogeophysical effects in terms of changes in surface albedo and air temperature. In particular, we focus our attention on a Maximum Impact Scenario (MIS) which simulates the greatest possible post-extinction reforestation in the model. More realistic experiments include sensitivity tests based on the timing of extinction, the fraction of trees grazed by mammoths, and the size of mammoth habitats. We also show the results of a simulation with free (non-prescribed) atmospheric CO2. For the MIS, we obtained a surface albedo increase of 0.006, which resulted in a global warming of 0.175 °C. Less extreme scenarios produced smaller global mean temperature changes, though local warming in some locations exceeded 0.3 °C even in the more realistic extinction scenarios. In the free CO2 simulation, the biogeophysical-induced warming was amplified by a biogeochemical effect whereby the replacement of high-latitude tundra with shrub forest led to a release of soil carbon to the atmosphere and a small atmospheric CO2 increase. Overall, our results suggest the potential for a small, though non-trivial, effect of megafaunal extinctions on Pleistocene climate change.

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McFarlane, Donald A., Ross D. E. MacPhee, and Derek C. Ford. "Body Size Variability and a Sangamonian Extinction Model for Amblyrhiza,a West Indian Megafaunal Rodent." Quaternary Research 50, no. 1 (July 1998): 80–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/qres.1998.1977.

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The megafaunal rodent Amblyrhiza inundatafrom Anguilla and St. Martin is often cited in lists of late Quaternary human-induced extinctions, but its date of disappearance has never been established. Here, we present a suite of uranium-series disequilibrium dates from three independent Amblyrhizasites in Anguilla, all of which cluster in marine isotope Stage 5. Thus, there is no indication that Amblyrhizasurvived into the late Holocene, when islands of the northern Lesser Antilles were first invaded by humans. We argue that the most probable cause of the extinction of Amblyrhizawas a failure of island populations to adjust to catastrophic reductions in available range which accompanied last interglacial sea-level maxima. We support this argument with quantitative extinction probability estimates drawn from persistence time models. Amblyrhizaexhibits body-size hypervariability, a common but underemphasized feature of island megafaunal species. We argue that hypervariability is a record of morphological response to oscillating natural selection, which in turn is driven by asymmetries in the relationship of population size, body mass, and persistence time. The fate of Amblyrhizastands in marked contrast to that of most other West Indian land mammals, whose losses increasingly appear to have been anthropogenically mediated.

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Tyler Faith, J. "Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions in Southern Africa's Cape Floral Region." Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 47, no. 2 (June 2012): 243. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0067270x.2012.690216.

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Stuart, Anthony John. "Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions on the continents: a short review." Geological Journal 50, no. 3 (December 20, 2014): 338–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/gj.2633.

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Leonard, Jennifer A., Carles Vilà, Kena Fox-Dobbs, Paul L. Koch, Robert K. Wayne, and Blaire Van Valkenburgh. "Megafaunal Extinctions and the Disappearance of a Specialized Wolf Ecomorph." Current Biology 17, no. 13 (July 2007): 1146–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.05.072.

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Hixon, Sean W., Jason H. Curtis, Mark Brenner, Kristina G. Douglass, Alejandra I. Domic, Brendan J. Culleton, Sarah J. Ivory, and Douglas J. Kennett. "Drought Coincided with, but Does Not Explain, Late Holocene Megafauna Extinctions in SW Madagascar." Climate 9, no. 9 (September 1, 2021): 138. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cli9090138.

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Climate drying could have transformed ecosystems in southern Madagascar during recent millennia by contributing to the extinction of endemic megafauna. However, the extent of regional aridification during the past 2000 years is poorly known, as are the responses of endemic animals and economically important livestock to drying. We inferred ~1600 years of climate change around Lake Ranobe, SW Madagascar, using oxygen isotope analyses of monospecific freshwater ostracods (Bradleystrandesia cf. fuscata) and elemental analyses of lake core sediment. We inferred past changes in habitat and diet of introduced and extinct endemic megaherbivores using bone collagen stable isotope and 14C datasets (n = 63). Extinct pygmy hippos and multiple giant lemur species disappeared from the vicinity of Ranobe during a dry interval ~1000–700 cal yr BP, but the simultaneous appearance of introduced cattle, high charcoal concentrations, and other evidence of human activity confound inference of drought-driven extirpations. Unlike the endemic megafauna, relatively low collagen stable nitrogen isotope values among cattle suggest they survived dry intervals by exploiting patches of wet habitat. Although megafaunal extirpations coincided with drought in SW Madagascar, coupled data from bone and lake sediments do not support the hypothesis that extinct megafauna populations collapsed solely because of drought. Given that the reliance of livestock on mesic patches will become more important in the face of projected climate drying, we argue that sustainable conservation of spiny forests in SW Madagascar should support local livelihoods by ensuring that zebu have access to mesic habitat. Additionally, the current interactions between pastoralism and riparian habitats should be studied to help conserve the island’s biodiversity.

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Davis, Owen K. "Spores of the Dung Fungus Sporormiella: Increased Abundance in Historic Sediments and Before Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction." Quaternary Research 28, no. 2 (September 1987): 290–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0033-5894(87)90067-6.

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AbstractSpores of the dung fungus Sporormiella become abundant following the historic introduction of grazing herbivores at seven sites in the western United States. During the Holocene they are generally rare, but at six sites Sporormiella spores are abundant before the extinction of Pleistocene megaherbivores ca. 11,000 yr B.P. Sporormiella spores are directly linked to extinct megaherbivores by their presence in mammoth dung preserved in Bechan Cave, Southern Utah. Their abundance in late-glacial sediments may reflect the abundance of megaherbivores during Quaternary, thereby indicating the age of Pleistocene extinctions where other indicators are absent.

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Meachen, J. A., and J. X. Samuels. "Evolution in coyotes (Canis latrans) in response to the megafaunal extinctions." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 11 (February 27, 2012): 4191–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1113788109.

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33

Turvey, Samuel T., Vijay Sathe, Jennifer J. Crees, Advait M. Jukar, Prateek Chakraborty, and Adrian M. Lister. "Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions in India: How much do we know?" Quaternary Science Reviews 252 (January 2021): 106740. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106740.

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34

Riahi, Ideen. "How hominin dispersals and megafaunal extinctions influenced the birth of agriculture." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 175 (July 2020): 227–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2020.03.025.

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35

Crowley, Brooke E., Laurie R. Godfrey, Richard J. Bankoff, George H. Perry, Brendan J. Culleton, Douglas J. Kennett, Michael R. Sutherland, Karen E. Samonds, and David A. Burney. "Island-wide aridity did not trigger recent megafaunal extinctions in Madagascar." Ecography 40, no. 8 (June 22, 2016): 901–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecog.02376.

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36

Yule, Jeffrey V. "North American Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions: Overkill, climate change, or both?" Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 18, no. 4 (July 2009): 159–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evan.20214.

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Kosintsev, Pavel, Kieren J. Mitchell, Thibaut Devièse, Johannes van der Plicht, Margot Kuitems, Ekaterina Petrova, Alexei Tikhonov, et al. "Evolution and extinction of the giant rhinoceros Elasmotherium sibiricum sheds light on late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions." Nature Ecology & Evolution 3, no. 1 (November 26, 2018): 31–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0722-0.

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38

DeSantis, Larisa R. G., Judith H. Field, Stephen Wroe, and John R. Dodson. "Dietary responses of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea) megafauna to climate and environmental change." Paleobiology 43, no. 2 (January 26, 2017): 181–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2016.50.

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AbstractThroughout the late Quaternary, the Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea) vertebrate fauna was dominated by a diversity of large mammals, birds, and reptiles, commonly referred to as megafauna. Since ca. 450–400Ka, approximately 88 species disappeared in Sahul, including kangaroos exceeding 200kg in size, wombat-like animals the size of hippopotamuses, flightless birds, and giant monitor lizards that were likely venomous. Ongoing debates over the primary cause of these extinctions have typically favored climate change or human activities. Improving our understanding of the population biology of extinct megafauna as more refined paleoenvironmental data sets become available will assist in identifying their potential vulnerabilities. Here, we apply a multiproxy approach to analyze fossil teeth from deposits dated to the middle and late Pleistocene at Cuddie Springs in southeastern Australia, assessing relative aridity via oxygen isotopes as well as vegetation and megafaunal diets using both carbon isotopes and dental microwear texture analyses. We report that the Cuddie Springs middle Pleistocene fauna was largely dominated by browsers, including consumers of C4 shrubs, but that by late Pleistocene times the C4 dietary component was markedly reduced. Our results suggest dietary restriction in more arid conditions. These dietary shifts are consistent with other independently derived isotopic data from eggshells and wombat teeth that also suggest a reduction in C4 vegetation after ~45 Ka in southeastern Australia, coincident with increasing aridification through the middle to late Pleistocene. Understanding the ecology of extinct species is important in clarifying the primary drivers of faunal extinction in Sahul. The results presented here highlight the potential impacts of aridification on marsupial megafauna. The trend to increasingly arid conditions through the middle to late Pleistocene (as identified in other paleoenvironmental records and now also observed, in part, in the Cuddie Springs sequence) may have stressed the most vulnerable animals, perhaps accelerating the decline of late Pleistocene megafauna in Australia.

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Li, Hanying, Ashish Sinha, Aurèle Anquetil André, Christoph Spötl, Hubert B. Vonhof, Arnaud Meunier, Gayatri Kathayat, et al. "A multimillennial climatic context for the megafaunal extinctions in Madagascar and Mascarene Islands." Science Advances 6, no. 42 (October 2020): eabb2459. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb2459.

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Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues underwent catastrophic ecological and landscape transformations, which virtually eliminated their entire endemic vertebrate megafauna during the past millennium. These ecosystem changes have been alternately attributed to either human activities, climate change, or both, but parsing their relative importance, particularly in the case of Madagascar, has proven difficult. Here, we present a multimillennial (approximately the past 8000 years) reconstruction of the southwest Indian Ocean hydroclimate variability using speleothems from the island of Rodrigues, located ∼1600 km east of Madagascar. The record shows a recurring pattern of hydroclimate variability characterized by submillennial-scale drying trends, which were punctuated by decadal-to-multidecadal megadroughts, including during the late Holocene. Our data imply that the megafauna of the Mascarenes and Madagascar were resilient, enduring repeated past episodes of severe climate stress, but collapsed when a major increase in human activity occurred in the context of a prominent drying trend.

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Virah-Sawmy, Malika, Katherine J. Willis, and Lindsey Gillson. "Evidence for drought and forest declines during the recent megafaunal extinctions in Madagascar." Journal of Biogeography 37, no. 3 (March 2010): 506–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02203.x.

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41

Norton, Christopher J., Youichi Kondo, Akira Ono, Yingqi Zhang, and Mark C. Diab. "The nature of megafaunal extinctions during the MIS 3–2 transition in Japan." Quaternary International 211, no. 1-2 (January 2010): 113–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2009.05.002.

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42

Faith, J. Tyler. "Late Pleistocene climate change, nutrient cycling, and the megafaunal extinctions in North America." Quaternary Science Reviews 30, no. 13-14 (June 2011): 1675–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2011.03.011.

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43

Pires, Mathias M., Paulo R. Guimarães, Mauro Galetti, and Pedro Jordano. "Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and the functional loss of long-distance seed-dispersal services." Ecography 41, no. 1 (August 21, 2017): 153–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03163.

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44

Lima-Ribeiro, Matheus Souza, and José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho. "American megafaunal extinctions and human arrival: Improved evaluation using a meta-analytical approach." Quaternary International 299 (June 2013): 38–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2013.03.007.

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45

Lyman, R. Lee. "Terminal Pleistocene change in mammal communities in southeastern Washington State, USA." Quaternary Research 81, no. 2 (March 2014): 295–304. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yqres.2013.10.019.

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AbstractSmall mammal communities in western North America experienced declines in taxonomic richness across the late Pleistocene to Holocene transition (PHT), a recent natural global warming event. One community also experienced a decline in evenness and others replaced one species with a congener. Variability in response of small mammal communities to PHT warming is apparent. At the presently arid and xeric Marmes site in the Columbia Basin of southeastern Washington State, megafauna were absent by about 13,000 cal yr BP, evenness of small mammals declined about 11,700 cal yr BP and again about 11,400 cal yr BP whereas richness declined about 11,400 cal BP. Regional faunal turnover was, however, minimal among small-bodied taxa. Local mammal communities are depauperate as a result of megafaunal extinctions and subsequent decreases in small-mammal richness and evenness. The latter chronologically corresponds with a decrease in primary productivity driven by increasing warmth and aridity. More faunas must be studied in order to fully document the range of variability in the responses of mammalian communities to PHT warming. Documentation of patterns in those responses will facilitate understanding and enhance predictive accuracy with respect to responses of mammalian communities to modern global warming.

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46

Stuart, Anthony J., and Adrian M. Lister. "Extinction chronology of the woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis in the context of late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions in northern Eurasia." Quaternary Science Reviews 51 (September 2012): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.06.007.

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47

Meachen, Julie A., Adrianna C. Janowicz, Jori E. Avery, and Rudyard W. Sadleir. "Ecological Changes in Coyotes (Canis latrans) in Response to the Ice Age Megafaunal Extinctions." PLoS ONE 9, no. 12 (December 31, 2014): e116041. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0116041.

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48

DeSantis, Larisa R. G., Jonathan M. Crites, Robert S. Feranec, Kena Fox-Dobbs, Aisling B. Farrell, John M. Harris, Gary T. Takeuchi, and Thure E. Cerling. "Causes and Consequences of Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions as Revealed from Rancho La Brea Mammals." Current Biology 29, no. 15 (August 2019): 2488–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.06.059.

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49

Rick, Torben C., John S. Wah, and Jon M. Erlandson. "Re-evaluating the origins of late Pleistocene fire areas on Santa Rosa Island, California, USA." Quaternary Research 78, no. 2 (July 21, 2012): 353–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yqres.2012.06.006.

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AbstractAt the close of the Pleistocene, fire regimes in North America changed significantly in response to climate change, megafaunal extinctions, anthropogenic burning and possibly, even an extraterrestrial impact. On California's Channel Islands, researchers have long debated the nature of late Pleistocene “fire areas,” discrete red zones in sedimentary deposits, interpreted by some as prehistoric mammoth-roasting pits created by humans. Further research found no evidence that these red zones were cultural in origin, and two hypotheses were advanced to explain their origin: natural fires and groundwater processes. Radiocarbon dating, X-ray diffraction analysis, and identification of charcoal from six red zones on Santa Rosa Island suggest that the studied features date between ~ 27,500 and 11,400 cal yr BP and resulted from burning or heating, not from groundwater processes. Our results show that fire was a component of late Pleistocene Channel Island ecology prior to and after human colonization of the islands, with no clear evidence for increased fire frequency coincident with Paleoindian settlement, extinction of pygmy mammoths, or a proposed Younger Dryas impact event.

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Barnosky, Anthony D., Marc A. Carrasco, and Russell W. Graham. "Collateral mammal diversity loss associated with late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions and implications for the future." Geological Society, London, Special Publications 358, no. 1 (2011): 179–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1144/sp358.12.

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