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| marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex the world’s most specialized mammalian carnivore |
Abstract
Around 88 large vertebrate taxa disappeared from Sahul sometime during the Pleistocene, with the majority of losses (54 taxa) clearly taking place within the last 400,000 years. The largest was the 2.8-ton browsing Diprotodon optatum, whereas the ∼100- to 130-kg marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, the world’s most specialized mammalian carnivore, and Varanus priscus, the largest lizard known, were formidable predators. Explanations for these extinctions have centered on climatic change or human activities. Here, we review the evidence and arguments for both. Human involvement in the disappearance of some species remains possible but unproven. Mounting evidence points to the loss of most species before the peopling of Sahul (circa 50–45 ka) and a significant role for climate change in the disappearance of the continent’s megafauna.
Keywords: megafauna extinction, Pleistocene extinctions, archaeology, human colonization, faunal turnover
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| Thylacoleo carnifex, the 100- to 130-kg marsupial lion with massive “bolt cutter-like” cheek teeth and the most powerful bite for its size of any mammalian carnivore, was a formidable predator of large animals.
Artwork: Peter Schouten
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Climate Change, Not Human Activity, Led to Megafauna Extinction
— Most species of gigantic animals that once roamed Australia had disappeared by the time people arrived, a major review of the available evidence has concluded.
The research challenges the claim that humans were primarily responsible for the demise of the megafauna in a proposed "extinction window" between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, and points the finger instead at climate change.
An international team led by the University of New South Wales, and including researchers at the University of Queensland, the University of New England, and the University of Washington, carried out the study. It is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The interpretation that humans drove the extinction rests on assumptions that increasingly have been shown to be incorrect. Humans may have played some role in the loss of those species that were still surviving when people arrived about 45,000 to 50,000 years ago -- but this also needs to be demonstrated," said Associate Professor Stephen Wroe, from UNSW, the lead author of the study.
"There has never been any direct evidence of humans preying on extinct megafauna in Sahul, or even of a tool-kit that was appropriate for big-game hunting," he said.
About 90 giant animal species once inhabited the continent of Sahul, which included mainland Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania.
"These leviathans included the largest marsupial that ever lived -- the rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon - and short-faced kangaroos so big we can't even be sure they could hop. Preying on them were goannas the size of large saltwater crocodiles with toxic saliva and bizarre but deadly marsupial lions with flick-blades on their thumbs and bolt cutters for teeth," said Associate Professor Wroe.
The review concludes there is only firm evidence for about 8 to 14 megafauna species still existing when Aboriginal people arrived. About 50 species, for example, are absent from the fossil record of the past 130,000 years.
Recent studies of Antarctic ice cores, ancient lake levels in central Australia, and other environmental indicators also suggest Sahul -- which was at times characterised by a vast desert -- experienced an increasingly arid and erratic climate during the past 450,000 years.
Arguments that humans were to blame have also focused on the traditional Aboriginal practice of burning the landscape. But recent research suggests that the fire history of the continent was more closely linked to climate than human activity, and increases in burning occurred long before people arrived.
"It is now increasingly clear that the disappearance of the megafauna of Sahul took place over tens, if not hundreds, of millennia under the influence of inexorable, albeit erratic, climatic deterioration," said Associate Professor Wroe.
Stephen Wroe, Judith H. Field, Michael Archer, Donald K. Grayson, Gilbert J. Price, Julien Louys, J. Tyler Faith, Gregory E. Webb, Iain Davidson, and Scott D. Mooney. 2013. Climate change frames debate over the extinction of megafauna in Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea). PNAS.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302698110
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302698110
Climate Change, Not Human Activity, Led to Megafauna Extinction
