The timing and cause of megafauna mass deaths at Lancefield Swamp, south-eastern Australia

Dortch, Joe; Cupper, Matthew L.; Grün, Rainer; Harpley, Bernice; Lee, Kerrie; Field, Judith

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.05.042

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 85 publications

(157 reference statements)

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“…As is the case in North America, much research in Australia has been focussed on the extinction of megafaunal species during the Late Pleistocene; approximately 96 % of the large mammal fauna was extinct by ~45 ka, a period broadly concurrent with human colonisation, although the extent to which these extinctions can be directly related to human activity remains a source of considerable debate (e.g. Koch and Barnosky, 2006;Prideaux et al, 2007Prideaux et al, , 2010Price et al, 2015;Dortch et al, 2016;Johnson, 2016;Johnson et al, 2016;Westaway et al, 2017;Fig. 11).…”

Section: Hereabouts 64 Australiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Fossils from Quaternary fluvial archives: Sources of biostratigraphical, biogeographical and palaeoclimatic evidence

White

Bridgland

Limondin-Lozouët

et al. 2017

Quaternary Science Reviews

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Fluvial sedimentary archives have the potential to preserve a wide variety of palaeontological evidence, ranging from robust bones and teeth found in coarse gravel aggradations to delicate insect remains and plant macrofossils from fine-grained deposits. Over the last decade, advances in Quaternary biostratigraphy based on vertebrate and invertebrate fossils (primarily mammals and molluscs) have been made in many parts of the world, resulting in improved relative chronologies for fluviatile sequences. Complementary fossil groups, such as insects, ostracods and plant macrofossils, are also increasingly used in multi-proxy palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, allowing direct comparison of the climates and environments that prevailed at different times across widely separated regions. This paper reviews these topics on a regional basis, with an emphasis on the latest published information, and represents an update to the 2007 review compiled by the FLAG-inspired IGCP 449 biostratigraphy subgroup. Disparities in the level of detail available for different regions can largely be attributed to varying potential for preservation of fossil material, which is especially poor in areas of non-calcareous bedrock, but to some extent also reflect research priorities in different parts of the world. Recognition of the value of biostratigraphical and palaeoclimatic frameworks, which have been refined over many decades in the 'core regions' for such research (particularly for the late Middle and Late Pleistocene of NW Europe), has focussed attention on the need to accumulate similar palaeontological datasets in areas lacking such long research histories. Although the emerging datasets from these understudied regions currently allow only tentative conclusions to be drawn, they represent an important stage in the development of independent biostratigraphical and palaeoenvironmental schemes, which can then be compared and contrasted. *Manuscript Click here to view linked References Highlights Research over the last decade into biostratigraphical data recorded in fluvial archives is reviewed Consideration of biogeography and palaeoclimatic evidence is also included This emphasizes the disparities in research priorities and fossil preservation on a global scale *Highlights (for review)

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Section: Hereabouts 64 Australiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Fossils from Quaternary fluvial archives: Sources of biostratigraphical, biogeographical and palaeoclimatic evidence

White

Bridgland

Limondin-Lozouët

et al. 2017

Quaternary Science Reviews

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“…In terms of climate, previous studies have highlighted that palaeoclimate trends in Australia are dominated by temporal variation in precipitation and/or aridity rather than temperature 25 , with important implications for extinctions — indeed, a decline in water levels at Lake Eyre and Lake Frome between 50,000 and 40,000 years before present were possibly related to local megafauna extinctions 26 , and Dortch et al . 27 invoked drought as a cause of extinctions for Macropus spp. in south-eastern Australia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FosSahul 2.0, an updated database for the Late Quaternary fossil records of Sahul

et al. 2019

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The 2016 version of the FosSahul database compiled non-human vertebrate megafauna fossil ages from Sahul published up to 2013 in a standardized format. Its purpose was to create a publicly available, centralized, and comprehensive database for palaeoecological investigations of the continent. Such databases require regular updates and improvements to reflect recent scientific findings. Here we present an updated FosSahul (2.0) containing 11,871 dated non-human vertebrate fossil records from the Late Quaternary published up to 2018. Furthermore, we have extended the information captured in the database to include methodological details and have developed an algorithm to automate the quality-rating process. The algorithm makes the quality-rating more transparent and easier to reproduce, facilitating future database extensions and dissemination. FosSahul has already enabled several palaeoecological analyses, and its updated version will continue to provide a centralized organisation of Sahul’s fossil records. As an example of an application of the database, we present the temporal pattern in megafauna genus richness inferred from available data in relation to palaeoclimate indices over the past 180,000 years.

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“…During the middle to late Pleistocene (a glacial period) a major extinction event occurred that eliminated much of the megafauna of the Americas, tundral Europe and the Sahul (the single land mass formed from Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania). Current explanations for this phenomenon include: overhunting (Prideaux et al 2009;Saltré et al 2016); indirect effects of landscape modification (such as slash and burn farming by aboriginal peoples (Miller et al 2005)); and the impacts of long-term climate change (Price and Webb 2006;Faith and O'Connell 2011;Dortch et al 2016).…”

Section: The Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction and Sahulian Floramentioning

confidence: 99%

A Geophysical and Climatological Assessment of New Guinea — Implications for the Origins ofSaccharum

Evans

2020

Preprint

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Any assessment of whether or not Saccharum species are native or introduced in New Guinea require an evolutionary (in a geological sense), geophysical and climatological assessment of the island. Like many of the land masses circling the Pacific (in the volcanically active region known as the 'ring of fire') New Guinea is geologically young, with the island in its modern form not pre-dating 2 Ma. Novel modelling of the 74 ka youngest Toba supereruption indicates a potential extinction level tsunami and loss of habitat. The late Pleistocene megafaunal mass extinction and the last glacial maximum (33-16 ka) are two global effects that would have significantly altered the flora on New Guinea; though the implications of these events on New Guinea have not previously been studied. Even if the genus Saccharum was established on the island during pre-historic times the consequences of Toba and other global climate change events means that it would have been eliminated from New Guinea and would have had to be re-introduced during the period of human colonization. Indeed, given the evolution of Saccharum's immediate ancestors in Africa and Indochina it is most parsimonious to conclude that it was never native to New Guinea, but was introduced by humans relatively recently.Little work has been done on palaeotsunami evidence and ancient tsunami modelling in New Guinea. However, the recent recognition that the Aitape skull (dating to about 6 ka) may have been the victim of a tsunami (Goff et al. 2017) show that, in the past, tsunami have penetrated significantly (about 10 km in this case) into the interior of the island to have a profound effect on biodiversity. This tsunami would have left the north coast of the island impoverished of plant life for several decades after.

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The timing and cause of megafauna mass deaths at Lancefield Swamp, south-eastern Australia

Cited by 15 publications

References 85 publications

Fossils from Quaternary fluvial archives: Sources of biostratigraphical, biogeographical and palaeoclimatic evidence

Fossils from Quaternary fluvial archives: Sources of biostratigraphical, biogeographical and palaeoclimatic evidence

FosSahul 2.0, an updated database for the Late Quaternary fossil records of Sahul

A Geophysical and Climatological Assessment of New Guinea — Implications for the Origins ofSaccharum

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