Abrupt warming events drove Late Pleistocene Holarctic megafaunal turnover

2015/07/24 by Alan Cooper, Chris Turney, Konrad A Hughen +3 · 4 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Biology #Climate change #Ecology #Extinction (optical mineralogy) #Geography #Geology #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Holocene #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Megafauna #Paleontology #Pleistocene #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Population

paper · doi:10.1126/science.aac4315

openalex publication_date 2015/07/24 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23

Abstract

The mechanisms of Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions remain fiercely contested, with human impact or climate change cited as principal drivers. We compared ancient DNA and radiocarbon data from 31 detailed time series of regional megafaunal extinctions and replacements over the past 56,000 years with standard and new combined records of Northern Hemisphere climate in the Late Pleistocene. Unexpectedly, rapid climate changes associated with interstadial warming events are strongly associated with the regional replacement or extinction of major genetic clades or species of megafauna. The presence of many cryptic biotic transitions before the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary revealed by ancient DNA confirms the importance of climate change in megafaunal population extinctions and suggests that metapopulation structures necessary to survive such repeated and rapid climatic shifts were susceptible to human impacts.

Citations

• Extreme reversed sexual size dimorphism in the extinct New Zealand moa Dinornis
• A new Greenland ice core chronology for the last glacial termination
• Deposition models for chronological records
• Dynamics of Pleistocene Population Extinctions in Beringian Brown Bears
• L'ethos di Giocasta tra Stesicoro e i ttragici
• A Multispecies Overkill Simulation of the End-Pleistocene Megafaunal Mass Extinction
• Rise and Fall of the Beringian Steppe Bison
• The WAIS Divide deep ice core WD2014 chronology – Part 1: Methane synchronization (68–31 ka BP) and the gas age–ice age difference
• IntCal13 and Marine13 Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curves 0–50,000 Years cal BP
• Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates

Cited by

• Global Phylogeographic and Admixture Patterns in Grey Wolves and Genetic Legacy of An Ancient Siberian Lineage
• Ancient DNA analysis of the extinct North American flat-headed peccary (Platygonus compressus)
• Process‐explicit models reveal pathway to extinction for woolly mammoth using pattern‐oriented validation
• Domestication of the dog [wikipedia]

Related

• Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change
• Robustness despite uncertainty: regional climate data reveal the dominant role of humans in explaining global extinctions of Late Quaternary megafauna
• The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene
• Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions on the continents: a short review
• Life and extinction of megafauna in the ice-age Arctic