Ecosystem Collapse in Pleistocene Australia and a Human Role in Megafaunal Extinction

2005/07/07 by Gifford H. Miller, Marilyn L. Fogel, John W. Magee +3 · 12 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · Environmental Science · #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

paper · doi:10.1126/science.1111288

openalex publication_date 2005/07/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Most of Australia's largest mammals became extinct 50,000 to 45,000 years ago, shortly after humans colonized the continent. Without exceptional climate change at that time, a human cause is inferred, but a mechanism remains elusive. A 140,000-year record of dietary delta(13)C documents a permanent reduction in food sources available to the Australian emu, beginning about the time of human colonization; a change replicated at three widely separated sites and in the marsupial wombat. We speculate that human firing of landscapes rapidly converted a drought-adapted mosaic of trees, shrubs, and nutritious grasslands to the modern fire-adapted desert scrub. Animals that could adapt survived; those that could not, became extinct.

Citations

• New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago

Cited by

• Did central Australian megafaunal extinction coincide with abrupt ecosystem collapse or gradual climate change?
• Fire in the Earth System
• Human predation contributed to the extinction of the Australian megafaunal bird Genyornis newtoni ∼47 ka
• Late-surviving megafauna in Tasmania, Australia, implicate human involvement in their extinction
• Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change
• The Anthropocene
• Fifty millennia of catastrophic extinctions after human contact
• The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate
• Updating Martin's global extinction model
• An arid-adapted middle Pleistocene vertebrate fauna from south-central Australia
• The last giant kangaroo
• Characteristics of Pleistocene megafauna extinctions in Southeast Asia
• Diprotodon [wikipedia]