Radiocarbon Chronologies and Extinction Dynamics of the Late Quaternary Mammalian Megafauna of the Taimyr Peninsula, Russian Federation

MacPhee, Ross D.E.; Tikhonov, A.; Mol, Dick; Maliave, CD; Plicht, van der Johannes; Greenwood, A. D.; Flemming, Clare; Agenbroad, Larry D.; MacPhee, R. D. E.; Tikhonov, Alexei; Marliave, Christian de; Greenwood, Alex D.

doi:10.1006/jasc.2001.0802

Cited by 106 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…This is because of the sometimes exceptional preservation of bones that have been stored in frozen and/or anaerobic sediment in the floodplains of these rivers. MacPhee et al (2002) reached a similar conclusion working with Pleistocene bones in northern Siberia. Our original goal was to date fifty bones each of mammoth, horse, caribou, muskox, and bison.…”

Section: Bone Collectionssupporting

confidence: 63%

Ice-age megafauna in Arctic Alaska: extinction, invasion, survival

Mann

Groves

Kunz

et al. 2013

Quaternary Science Reviews

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Groves, Pamela; Kunz, Michael L.; Reanier, Richard E.; and Gaglioti, Benjamin V., "Ice-age megafauna in Arctic Alaska: extinction, invasion, survival" (2013 a b s t r a c tRadical restructuring of the terrestrial, large mammal fauna living in arctic Alaska occurred between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. Steppe bison, horse, and woolly mammoth became extinct, moose and humans invaded, while muskox and caribou persisted. The ice age megafauna was more diverse in species and possibly contained 6Â more individual animals than live in the region today. Megafaunal biomass during the last ice age may have been 30Â greater than present. Horse was the dominant species in terms of number of individuals. Lions, short-faced bears, wolves, and possibly grizzly bears comprised the predator/scavenger guild. The youngest mammoth so far discovered lived ca 13,800 years ago, while horses and bison persisted on the North Slope until at least 12,500 years ago during the Younger Dryas cold interval. The first people arrived on the North Slope ca 13,500 years ago. Bone-isotope measurements and foot-loading characteristics suggest megafaunal niches were segregated along a moisture gradient, with the surviving species (muskox and caribou) utilizing the warmer and moister portions of the vegetation mosaic. As the ice age ended, the moisture gradient shifted and eliminated habitats utilized by the dryland, grazing species (bison, horse, mammoth). The proximate cause for this change was regional paludification, the spread of organic soil horizons and peat. End-Pleistocene extinctions in arctic Alaska represent local, not global extinctions since the megafaunal species lost there persisted to later times elsewhere. Hunting seems unlikely as the cause of these extinctions, but it cannot be ruled out as the final blow to megafaunal populations that were already functionally extinct by the time humans arrived in the region.

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Section: Bone Collectionssupporting

confidence: 63%

Ice-age megafauna in Arctic Alaska: extinction, invasion, survival

Mann

Groves

Kunz

et al. 2013

Quaternary Science Reviews

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“…In the southern Jura and northern French Alps, reindeer disappeared sometime between 12,000 and 11,000 years ago [10]. In the Taimyr Peninsula of northern Siberia, mammoth disappeared from the mainland shortly after 10,000 years ago, although they persisted well into the Holocene on Wrangel Island [51]. While all this was happening, Harrington's mountain goat and the Shasta ground sloth disappeared from the American Southwest [60,65], caribou (North American reindeer) retreat from their late Pleistocene ranges in the American midwest and southeast [14,26,61], and mammoth and mastodon (among others) are lost from the American landscape.…”

Section: The Extinctions Occurred 11000 Years Agomentioning

confidence: 99%

A requiem for North American overkill

Grayson

Meltzer

2003

Journal of Archaeological Science

273

154

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The argument that human hunters were responsible for the extinction of a wide variety of large Pleistocene mammals emerged in western Europe during the 1860s, alongside the recognition that people had coexisted with those mammals. Today, the overkill position is rejected for western Europe but lives on in Australia and North America. The survival of this hypothesis is due almost entirely to Paul Martin, the architect of the first detailed version of it. In North America, archaeologists and paleontologists whose work focuses on the late Pleistocene routinely reject Martin's position for two prime reasons: there is virtually no evidence that supports it, and there is a remarkably broad set of evidence that strongly suggests that it is wrong. In response, Martin asserts that the overkill model predicts a lack of supporting evidence, thus turning the absence of empirical support into support for his beliefs. We suggest that this feature of the overkill position removes the hypothesis from the realm of science and places it squarely in the realm of faith. One may or may not believe in the overkill position, but one should not confuse it with a scientific hypothesis about the nature of the North American past.

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“…Near the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary the last mammoths disappeared from Europe and the mainlands of Asia and North America (MacPhee et al, 2002). Only isolated populations of mammoths survived in Alaska, with bones dated at 7000 cal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The mammoth site of Niederweningen, Switzerland

Furrer

Graf

Mäder

2007

Quaternary International

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In 1890 more than 100 bones, molar teeth and tusks of at least seven different individuals of mammoths, including a very young calf, were found in a peat horizon at the base of a gravel pit at the village of Niederweningen, 20 km northwest of Zu¨rich. Further fragmentary fossils have been identified as remains of woolly rhino, wild horse, bison, wolf, lemming, vole, frog and bird. In 2003 and 2004 new fossils and good sections of the peat horizon were studied in large construction pits located close to the old Niederweningen mammoth site. The highlight was a well-preserved articulated mammoth skeleton with an estimated height of about 3.50 m. New 14 C-AMS dating confirm that bones and teeth of mammoth, peat and wood found in association with mammoth, have an age of about 45 ka BP. Luminescence dating of one section provides time control with ages of 70-80 ka for the sediments below the peat and 40 ka above the peat. First studies on pollen, seeds, wood and beetle allow the reconstruction of environment and climate during this time interval in the middle part of the last glacial cycle (Middle Wu¨rmian). r

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Radiocarbon Chronologies and Extinction Dynamics of the Late Quaternary Mammalian Megafauna of the Taimyr Peninsula, Russian Federation

Cited by 106 publications

References 45 publications

Ice-age megafauna in Arctic Alaska: extinction, invasion, survival

Ice-age megafauna in Arctic Alaska: extinction, invasion, survival

A requiem for North American overkill

The mammoth site of Niederweningen, Switzerland

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