Dietary responses of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea)megafauna to climate and environmental change

doi:10.1017/pab.2016.50

IEECAS OpenIR > 黄土与第四纪地质国家重点实验室（2010~）

	Dietary responses of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea)megafauna to climate and environmental change
	DeSantis, L.R.G(DeSantis, Larisa R.G)1; Field,J.H(Field,Judith H)2; Wore, S(Wore,Stephen)2,3; Dodson, J.R(Dodson, John R)2,4; DeSantis, Larisa R.G
	2017-01-26
发表期刊	The Paleontological Society
卷号	43 期号:2 页码:181-195
文章类型	期刊论文
其他摘要	Throughout the late Quaternary, the Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea) vertebrate fauna was dominated by a diversity of large mammals, birds, and reptiles, commonly referred to as megafauna. Since ca. 450–400Ka, approximately 88 species disappeared in Sahul, including kangaroos exceeding 200kg in size, wombat-like animals the size of hippopotamuses, flightless birds, and giant monitor lizards that were likely venomous. Ongoing debates over the primary cause of these extinctions have typically favored climate change or human activities. Improving our understanding of the population biology of extinct megafauna as more refined paleoenvironmental data sets become available will assist in identifying their potential vulnerabilities. Here, we apply a multiproxy approach to analyze fossil teeth from deposits dated to the middle and late Pleistocene at Cuddie Springs in southeastern Australia, assessing relative aridity via oxygen isotopes as well as vegetation and megafaunal diets using both carbon isotopes and dental microwear texture analyses. We report that the Cuddie Springs middle Pleistocene fauna was largely dominated by browsers, including consumers of C4 shrubs, but that by late Pleistocene times the C4 dietary component was markedly reduced. Our results suggest dietary restriction in more arid conditions. These dietary shifts are consistent with other independently derived isotopic data from eggshells and wombat teeth that also suggest a reduction in C4 vegetation after ~45 Ka in southeastern Australia, coincident with increasing aridification through the middle to late Pleistocene. Understanding the ecology of extinct species is important in clarifying the primary drivers of faunal extinction in Sahul. The results presented here highlight the potential impacts of aridification on marsupial megafauna. The trend to increasingly arid conditions through the middle to late Pleistocene (as identified in other paleoenvironmental records and now also observed, in part, in the Cuddie Springs sequence) may have stressed the most vulnerable animals, perhaps accelerating the decline of late Pleistocene megafauna in Australia.
DOI	10.1017/pab.2016.50
收录类别	SCI
所属项目编号	EAR1053839 ; FAIN1455198 ; ARC LP211430 ; DP05579230
语种	英语
项目资助者	NationalScience Foundation ; NationalScience Foundation ; the Australian Research Council ; the Australian Research Council ; the University of New South Wales ; the University of New South Wales ; the University ofSydney ; the University ofSydney ; Oak Ridge Associated UniversitiesRalph E. Powe Junior Faculty EnhancementAward ; Oak Ridge Associated UniversitiesRalph E. Powe Junior Faculty EnhancementAward ; Vanderbilt University ; Vanderbilt University
引用统计	被引频次：34[WOS] [WOS记录] [WOS相关记录]
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://ir.ieecas.cn/handle/361006/5588
专题	黄土与第四纪地质国家重点实验室（2010~）
通讯作者	DeSantis, Larisa R.G
作者单位	1.DeSantis. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville,TN 37235-1805, U.S.A 2.School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales,Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia 3.Department of Zoology, School of Environmental and Rural Sciences,University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia 4.Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an,Shaanxi, 710061, China
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	DeSantis, L.R.G(DeSantis, Larisa R.G),Field,J.H(Field,Judith H),Wore, S(Wore,Stephen),等. Dietary responses of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea)megafauna to climate and environmental change[J]. The Paleontological Society,2017,43(2):181-195.
APA	DeSantis, L.R.G,Field,J.H,Wore, S,Dodson, J.R,&DeSantis, Larisa R.G.(2017).Dietary responses of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea)megafauna to climate and environmental change.The Paleontological Society,43(2),181-195.
MLA	DeSantis, L.R.G,et al."Dietary responses of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea)megafauna to climate and environmental change".The Paleontological Society 43.2(2017):181-195.

条目包含的文件
文件名称/大小	文献类型	版本类型	开放类型	使用许可
Dietary responses of（1079KB）	期刊论文	出版稿	开放获取	CC BY-NC-SA	请求全文