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Micro Methods for Megafauna: Novel Approaches to Late Quaternary Extinctions and Their Contributions to Faunal Conservation in the Anthropocene

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posted on 2023-05-21, 01:10 authored by Swift, JA, Bunce, M, Dortch, J, Douglass, K, Faith, JT, Fellows Yates, JA, Field, J, Haberle, SG, Jacob, E, Christopher JohnsonChristopher Johnson, Lindsey, E, Lorenzen, ED, Louys, J, Miller, G, Mychajliw, AM, Slon, V, Villavicencio, NA, Waters, MR, Welker, F, Wood, R, Petraglia, M, Boivin, N, Roberts, P
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.

History

Publication title

BioScience

Volume

69

Issue

11

Pagination

877-887

ISSN

0006-3568

Department/School

School of Natural Sciences

Publisher

Amer Inst Biological Sci

Place of publication

1444 Eye St, Nw, Ste 200, Washington, USA, Dc, 20005

Rights statement

© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems

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