Robustness despite uncertainty: regional climate data reveal the dominant role of humans in explaining global extinctions of Late Quaternary megafauna

Abstract

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms ` Robustness despite uncertainty: regional climate data reveal the dominant role of humans in explaining global extinctions of Late Quaternary megafauna AbstractDebate over the late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions has focussed on whether human colonisation or climatic changes were more important, with few extinctions being unambiguously attributable to either. Most analyses have been geographically or taxonomically restricted and the few quantitative global analyses have been limited by coarse temporal resolution or overly simplified climate reconstructions or proxies. We present a global analysis of the causes of these extinctions which uses high-resolution climate reconstructions and explicitly investigates the sensitivity of our results to uncertainty in the palaeological record. Our results show that human colonisation was the dominant driver of megafaunal extinction across the world but that climatic factors were also important. We identify the geographic regions where future research is likely to have the most impact, with our models reliably predicting extinctions across most of the world, with the notable exception of mainland Asia where we fail to explain the apparently low rate of extinction found in the fossil record. Our results are highly robust to uncertainties in the palaeological record, and our main conclusions are unlikely to change qualitatively following new data on extinction or human colonisation dates.

What caused extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna of Sahul?

“…The evidence summarized here for a dominant role of direct human impact is therefore globally significant. Several recent analyses of megafaunal extinction using global databases agree in finding a dominant role for humans in most of the world [2, 5,85]. The evidence from Sahul in these analyses is less clear, probably because the data on Sahul's megafauna were relatively sparse and of variable quality.…”

Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions

“…Of particular importance are new global analyses drawing on higher resolution data and computational modeling approaches. These studies indicate an important role for humans and an inverse relationship between severity of extinction and duration of hominin-megafauna coevolution, with uniformly high extinction rates in areas where H. sapiens was the first hominin to arrive (39,40) (Fig. S1).…”

Megafauna and ecosystem function from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene

“…Our earliest art forms, such as the haunting and mesmerizing Late Pleistocene cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira, show that megafauna had a profound impact on the psyche and spirituality of our ancestors. To humans past and modern, they indicate resources, danger, power, and charisma, but, beyond these impacts, such large animals have profound and distinct effects on the nature and functioning of the ecosystems they inhabit.Martin (8) first posited a major human role in past megafaunal disappearances, and, since then, much has been written on their patterns and causes and the relative importance of human effects, climate change, and other factors (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Only recently has work begun to address the environmental consequences of this dramatic transition from a megafaunal to a nonmegafaunal world on Earth's ecology, as manifested through vegetation cover (16), plant-animal interactions (17), ecosystem structure (16, 18), trophic interactions (7), fire regimes (19), biogeochemical cycling (20), and climate (21,22).…”

“…Martin (8) first posited a major human role in past megafaunal disappearances, and, since then, much has been written on their patterns and causes and the relative importance of human effects, climate change, and other factors (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15). Only recently has work begun to address the environmental consequences of this dramatic transition from a megafaunal to a nonmegafaunal world on Earth's ecology, as manifested through vegetation cover (16), plant-animal interactions (17), ecosystem structure (16,18), trophic interactions (7), fire regimes (19), biogeochemical cycling (20), and climate (21,22).…”