title: An arid-adapted middle Pleistocene vertebrate fauna from south-central Australia.
abstract: How well the ecology, zoogeography and evolution of modern biotas is understood depends substantially on knowledge of the Pleistocene. Australia has one of the most distinctive, but least understood, Pleistocene faunas. Records from the western half of the continent are especially rare. Here we report on a diverse and exceptionally well preserved middle Pleistocene vertebrate assemblage from caves beneath the arid, treeless Nullarbor plain of south-central Australia. Many taxa are represented by whole skeletons, which together serve as a template for identifying fragmentary, hitherto indeterminate, remains collected previously from Pleistocene sites across southern Australia. A remarkable eight of the 23 Nullarbor kangaroos are new, including two tree-kangaroos. The diverse herbivore assemblage implies substantially greater floristic diversity than that of the modern shrub steppe, but all other faunal and stable-isotope data indicate that the climate was very similar to today. Because the 21 Nullarbor species that did not survive the Pleistocene were well adapted to dry conditions, climate change (specifically, increased aridity) is unlikely to have been significant in their extinction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Western Australian Museum, Perth, Western Australia 6000, Australia. gavin.prideaux@museum.wa.gov.au
authors.forename: Gavin J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Prideaux
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Long
authors.forename: Linda K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Ayliffe
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Hellstrom
authors.forename: Brad
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pillans
authors.forename: Walter E
authors.initials: WE
authors.lastname: Boles
authors.forename: Mark N
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Hutchinson
authors.forename: Richard G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Roberts
authors.forename: Matthew L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Cupper
authors.forename: Lee J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Arnold
authors.forename: Paul D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Devine
authors.forename: Natalie M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Warburton
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001315:Australia; D044822:Biodiversity; D002247:Carbon Isotopes; D003889:Desert Climate; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D005580:Fossils; D005843:Geography; D049690:History, Ancient; D007614:Macropodidae / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D010103:Oxygen Isotopes; D012863:Skeleton; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D002247:Carbon Isotopes; D010103:Oxygen Isotopes