Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change.

ABSTRACT: The late Quaternary megafauna extinction was a severe global-scale event. Two factors, climate change and modern humans, have received broad support as the primary drivers, but their absolute and relative importance remains controversial. To date, focus has been on the extinction chronology of individual or small groups of species, specific geographical regions or macroscale studies at very coarse geographical and taxonomic resolution, limiting the possibility of adequately testing the proposed hypotheses. We present, to our knowledge, the first global analysis of this extinction based on comprehensive country-level data on the geographical distribution of all large mammal species (more than or equal to 10 kg) that have gone globally or continentally extinct between the beginning of the La

SUBMITTER: Sandom C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4071532 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature