title: Humans rather than climate the primary cause of Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in Australia.
abstract: Environmental histories that span the last full glacial cycle and are representative of regional change in Australia are scarce, hampering assessment of environmental change preceding and concurrent with human dispersal on the continent ca. 47,000 years ago. Here we present a continuous 150,000-year record offshore south-western Australia and identify the timing of two critical late Pleistocene events: wide-scale ecosystem change and regional megafaunal population collapse. We establish that substantial changes in vegetation and fire regime occurred ∼70,000 years ago under a climate much drier than today. We record high levels of the dung fungus Sporormiella, a proxy for herbivore biomass, from 150,000 to 45,000 years ago, then a marked decline indicating megafaunal population collapse, from 45,000 to 43,100 years ago, placing the extinctions within 4,000 years of human dispersal across Australia. These findings rule out climate change, and implicate humans, as the primary extinction cause.
authors.affiliation: School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia.|Cluster Earth and Climate, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: van der Kaars
authors.affiliation: INSTAAR and Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0450, USA.|Department of Environment and Agriculture, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia 6102, Australia.
authors.forename: Gifford H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.affiliation: Climate Change Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.|Palaeontology, Geobiology and Earth Archives Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: Chris S M
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Turney
authors.affiliation: School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Ellyn J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.affiliation: GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, D-24148 Kiel, Germany.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nürnberg
authors.affiliation: GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, D-24148 Kiel, Germany.
authors.forename: Joachim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schönfeld
authors.affiliation: School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: A Peter
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Kershaw
authors.affiliation: INSTAAR and Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0450, USA.
authors.forename: Scott J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Lehman
mesh_terms: D063147:Animal Distribution; D000818:Animals; D001315:Australia; D057231:Climate Change / Q000266:history*; D017753:Ecosystem; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D005658:Fungi / Q000502:physiology; D060434:Herbivory / Q000502:physiology; D049690:History, Ancient; D006802:Human Activities / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D008322:Mammals / Q000502:physiology*; D011157:Population Dynamics / Q000266:history*