Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Figures Only Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (7) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Prideaux, G. J. Articles by Olley, J. M. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Mammalian responses to Pleistocene climate change in southeastern Australia

¹ School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia 5042, Australia
² GeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia
³ Museum of Central Australia, Alice Springs, Northern Territory 0871, Australia
⁴ GeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia
⁵ School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
⁶ Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Land and Water, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia

Resolving faunal responses to Pleistocene climate change is vital for differentiating human impacts from other drivers of ecological change. While 90% of Australia's large mammals were extinct by ca. 45 ka, their responses to glacial-interglacial cycling have remained unknown, due to a lack of rigorous biostratigraphic studies and the rarity of terrestrial climatic records that can be related directly to faunal records. We present an analysis of faunal data from the Naracoorte Caves in southeastern Australia, which are unique not only because of the species richness and time-depth of the assemblages that they contain, but also because this faunal record is directly comparable with a 500 k.y. speleothem-based record of local effective moisture. Our data reveal that, despite significant population fluctuations driven by glacial-interglacial cycling, the species composition of the mammal fauna was essentially stable for 500 k.y. before the late Pleistocene extinctions. Larger species declined during a drier interval between 270 and 220 ka, likely reflecting range contractions away from Naracoorte, but they then recovered locally, persisting well into the late Pleistocene. Because the speleothem record and prior faunal response imply that local conditions should have been favorable for megafauna until at least 30 ka, climate change is unlikely to have been the principal cause of the extinctions.

Key Words: mammals • megafauna • extinction • climate change • Pleistocene • Australia

This article has been cited by other articles:

				C. S. M. Turney, T. F. Flannery, R. G. Roberts, C. Reid, L. K. Fifield, T. F. G. Higham, Z. Jacobs, N. Kemp, E. A. Colhoun, R. M. Kalin, et al. Late-surviving megafauna in Tasmania, Australia, implicate human involvement in their extinction PNAS, August 26, 2008; 105(34): 12150 - 12153. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				G. E. Webb, G. J. Price, L. D. Nothdurft, L. Deer, and L. Rintoul Cryptic meteoric diagenesis in freshwater bivalves: Implications for radiocarbon dating Geology, September 1, 2007; 35(9): 803 - 806. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]