Stuart A J, Kosintsev P A, Higham T F G, Lister A M
Department of Biology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
Nature. 2004 Oct 7;431(7009):684-9. doi: 10.1038/nature02890.
The extinction of the many well-known large mammals (megafauna) of the Late Pleistocene epoch has usually been attributed to 'overkill' by human hunters, climatic/vegetational changes or to a combination of both. An accurate knowledge of the geography and chronology of these extinctions is crucial for testing these hypotheses. Previous assumptions that the megafauna of northern Eurasia had disappeared by the Pleistocene/Holocene transition were first challenged a decade ago by the discovery that the latest woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island, northeastern Siberia, were contemporaneous with ancient Egyptian civilization. Here we show that another spectacular megafaunal species, the giant deer or 'Irish elk', survived to around 6,900 radiocarbon yr bp (about 7,700 yr ago) in western Siberia-more than three millennia later than its previously accepted terminal date-and therefore, that the reasons for its ultimate demise are to be sought in Holocene not Pleistocene events. Before their extinction, both giant deer and woolly mammoth underwent dramatic shifts in distribution, driven largely by climatic/vegetational changes. Their differing responses reflect major differences in ecology.
晚更新世时期许多著名的大型哺乳动物（巨型动物群）的灭绝通常被归因于人类猎人的“过度捕杀”、气候/植被变化或两者的结合。准确了解这些灭绝事件的地理分布和年代顺序对于检验这些假说至关重要。此前认为欧亚大陆北部的巨型动物群在更新世/全新世过渡时期已经消失的假设，在十年前首次受到挑战，当时发现西伯利亚东北部弗兰格尔岛上的最后一批猛犸象与古埃及文明是同时代的。我们在此表明，另一种引人注目的巨型动物物种，即巨鹿或“爱尔兰麋鹿”，在西西伯利亚一直存活到放射性碳年代约为公元前6900年（约7700年前），比之前公认的灭绝时间晚了三千多年，因此，其最终灭绝的原因应在全新世而非更新世事件中寻找。在灭绝之前，巨鹿和猛犸象的分布都发生了巨大变化，这主要是由气候/植被变化驱动的。它们不同的反应反映了生态学上的重大差异。
