2016/03/10 by Julien Louys, Gilbert J. Price, Sue O’Connor · 3 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Primate Behavior and Ecology
paper · pdf · doi:10.7717/peerj.1788
openalex publication_date 2016/03/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Stegodons are a commonly recovered extinct proboscidean (elephants and allies) from the Pleistocene record of Southeast Asian oceanic islands. Estimates on when stegodons arrived on individual islands and the timings of their extinctions are poorly constrained due to few reported direct geochronological analyses of their remains. Here we report on uranium-series dating of a stegodon tusk recovered from the Ainaro Gravels of Timor. The six dates obtained indicate the local presence of stegodons in Timor at or before 130 ka, significantly pre-dating the earliest evidence of humans on the island. On the basis of current data, we find no evidence for significant environmental changes or the presence of modern humans in the region during that time. Thus, we do not consider either of these factors to have contributed significantly to their extinction. In the absence of these, we propose that their extinction was possibly the result of long-term demographic and genetic declines associated with an isolated island population.