DOI: 10.73/pnas.2015032117
论文题名: Overkill; glacial history; and the extinction of North America’s Ice Age megafauna
作者: Meltzer D.J.
刊名: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ISSN: 0027-8424
出版年: 2020
卷: 117, 期: 46 起始页码: 28555
结束页码: 28563
语种: 英语
英文关键词: Pleistocene extinctions|human overkill|glacial−interglacial climate change|megafauna|North America
Scopus关键词: climate change
; Holocene
; human
; interglacial
; mammal
; nonhuman
; North America
; Pleistocene
; predation
; review
; article
英文摘要: The end of the Pleistocene in North America saw the extinction of 38 genera of mostly large mammals. As their disappearance seemingly coincided with the arrival of people in the Americas, their extinction is often attributed to human overkill, notwithstanding a dearth of archaeological evidence of human predation. Moreover, this period saw the extinction of other species, along with significant changes in many surviving taxa, suggesting a broader cause, notably, the ecological upheaval that occurred as Earth shifted from a glacial to an interglacial climate. But, overkill advocates ask, if extinctions were due to climate changes, why did these large mammals survive previous glacial−interglacial transitions, only to vanish at the one when human hunters were present? This question rests on two assumptions: that previous glacial−interglacial transitions were similar to the end of the Pleistocene, and that the large mammal genera survived unchanged over multiple such cycles. Neither is demonstrably correct. Resolving the cause of large mammal extinctions requires greater knowledge of individual species’ histories and their adaptive tolerances, a fuller understanding of how past climatic and ecological changes impacted those animals and their biotic communities, and what changes occurred at the Pleistocene−Holocene boundary that might have led to those genera going extinct at that time. Then we will be able to ascertain whether the sole ecologically significant difference between previous glacial−interglacial transitions and the very last one was a human presence. © 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Citation statistics:
资源类型: 期刊论文
标识符: http://119.78.100.158/handle/2HF3EXSE/162249
Appears in Collections: 气候变化与战略
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作者单位: Meltzer, D.J., Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275, United States
Recommended Citation:
Meltzer D.J.. Overkill; glacial history; and the extinction of North America’s Ice Age megafauna[J]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,2020-01-01,117(46)