Prelude to the Anthropocene: Two new North American Land Mammal Ages (NALMAs)

Barnosky, Anthony D.; Holmes, Michael W.; Kirchholtes, Renske; Lindsey, Emily; Maguire, Kaitlin C.; Poust, Ashley W.; Stegner, M. Allison; Sunseri, Jun; Swartz, Β. K.; Swift, Jillian A.; Villavicencio, Natalia A.; Wogan, Guinevere O. U.

doi:10.1177/2053019614547433

Cited by 55 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Defaunation on land began 10,000 to 100,000 years ago as humans were expanding their range and coming into first contact with novel faunal assemblages (2)(3)(4). By contrast, the physical properties of the marine environment limited our capacity early on to access and eliminate marine animal species.…”

Section: Delayed Defaunation In the Oceansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean

McCauley

Pinsky

Palumbi

et al. 2015

Science

1,036

711

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BACKGROUND: Comparing patterns of terrestrial and marine defaunation helps to place human impacts on marine fauna in context and to navigate toward recovery. Defaunation began in earnest tens of thousands of years later in the oceans than it did on land. Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact. Humans have caused few complete extinctions in the sea, but we are responsible for many ecological, commercial, and local extinctions. Despite our late start, humans have already powerfully changed virtually all major marine ecosystems.

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Section: Delayed Defaunation In the Oceansmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean

McCauley

Pinsky

Palumbi

et al. 2015

Science

1,036

711

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…This is because the signals of anthropogenic change (artefacts, anthropogenically modified vegetal and animal biotas) reflect the expansion and shifting nature of the human domain (e.g. Brown et al, 2013), and significant marker levels such as soil horizons (Gale and Hoare, 2012) are local to regional rather than continent-wide or global signals e and are largely restricted to the terrestrial and coastal realms (for the latter see e.g. Cohen and Lobo, 2013), with the oceans (and hence the accumulation of marine strata) remaining unaffected.…”

Section: Exploring Precise Timing Of the Levelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal

Zalasiewicz

Waters

Williams

et al. 2015

Quaternary International

602

326

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We evaluate the boundary of the Anthropocene geological time interval as an epoch, since it is useful to have a consistent temporal definition for this increasingly used unit, whether the presently informal term is eventually formalized or not. Of the three main levels suggested - an 'early Anthropocene' level some thousands of years ago; the beginning of the Industrial Revolution at similar to 1800 CE (Common Era); and the 'Great Acceleration' of the mid-twentieth century - current evidence suggests that the last of these has the most pronounced and globally synchronous signal. A boundary at this time need not have a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP or 'golden spike') but can be defined by a Global Standard Stratigraphic Age (GSSA), i.e. a point in time of the human calendar. We propose an appropriate boundary level here to be the time of the world's first nuclear bomb explosion, on July 16th 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico; additional bombs were detonated at the average rate of one every 9.6 days until 1988 with attendant worldwide fallout easily identifiable in the chemostratigraphic record. Hence, Anthropocene deposits would be those that may include the globally distributed primary artificial radionuclide signal, while also being recognized using a wide range of other stratigraphic criteria. This suggestion for the Holocene-Anthropocene boundary may ultimately be superseded, as the Anthropocene is only in its early phases, but it should remain practical and effective for use by at least the current generation of scientists. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA

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“…Paleontologically, Bison is the index taxon for the Rancholabrean, the final North American Land Mammal Age (8)(9)(10). Land Mammal ages are important because, in the absence of other chronological data, they provide a means to infer the age of a locality based on taxonomic assemblages.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fossil and genomic evidence constrains the timing of bison arrival in North America

Froese

Stiller

Heintzman

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

100

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The arrival of bison in North America marks one of the most successful large-mammal dispersals from Asia within the last million years, yet the timing and nature of this event remain poorly determined. Here, we used a combined paleontological and paleogenomic approach to provide a robust timeline for the entry and subsequent evolution of bison within North America. We characterized two fossil-rich localities in Canada’s Yukon and identified the oldest well-constrained bison fossil in North America, a 130,000-y-old steppe bison, Bison cf. priscus. We extracted and sequenced mitochondrial genomes from both this bison and from the remains of a recently discovered, ∼120,000-y-old giant long-horned bison, Bison latifrons, from Snowmass, Colorado. We analyzed these and 44 other bison mitogenomes with ages that span the Late Pleistocene, and identified two waves of bison dispersal into North America from Asia, the earliest of which occurred ∼195–135 thousand y ago and preceded the morphological diversification of North American bison, and the second of which occurred during the Late Pleistocene, ∼45–21 thousand y ago. This chronological arc establishes that bison first entered North America during the sea level lowstand accompanying marine isotope stage 6, rejecting earlier records of bison in North America. After their invasion, bison rapidly colonized North America during the last interglaciation, spreading from Alaska through continental North America; they have been continuously resident since then.

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Prelude to the Anthropocene: Two new North American Land Mammal Ages (NALMAs)

Cited by 55 publications

References 58 publications

Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean

Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean

When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal

Fossil and genomic evidence constrains the timing of bison arrival in North America

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