136131- Climate-human interaction associated with southeast Australian megafauna extinction patterns.pdf (1.23 MB)
Climate-human interaction associated with southeast Australian megafauna extinction patterns
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-20, 08:41 authored by Saltre, F, Chadoeuf, J, Peters, KJ, Matthew McDowellMatthew McDowell, Friedrich, T, Timmermann, A, Ulm, S, Bradshaw, CJAThe mechanisms leading to megafauna (>44 kg) extinctions in Late Pleistocene (126,000— 12,000 years ago) Australia are highly contested because standard chronological analyses rely on scarce data of varying quality and ignore spatial complexity. Relevant archaeological and palaeontological records are most often also biased by differential preservation resulting in under-representated older events. Chronological analyses have attributed megafaunal extinctions to climate change, humans, or a combination of the two, but rarely consider spatial variation in extinction patterns, initial human appearance trajectories, and palaeoclimate change together. Here we develop a statistical approach to infer spatio-temporal trajectories of megafauna extirpations (local extinctions) and initial human appearance in south-eastern Australia. We identify a combined climate-human effect on regional extirpation patterns suggesting that small, mobile Aboriginal populations potentially needed access to drinkable water to survive arid ecosystems, but were simultaneously constrained by climate-dependent net landscape primary productivity. Thus, the co-drivers of megafauna extirpations were themselves constrained by the spatial distribution of climate-dependent water sources.
History
Publication title
Nature CommunicationsVolume
10Article number
5311Number
5311Pagination
1-9ISSN
2041-1723Department/School
School of Natural SciencesPublisher
Nature Publishing GroupPlace of publication
United KingdomRights statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Repository Status
- Open