Geosciences, Queensland Museum, 122 Gerler Rd., Hendra, QLD, 4011, Australia.
School of BioSciences, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia.
Nat Commun. 2020 May 18;11(1):2250. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15785-w.
Explanations for the Upper Pleistocene extinction of megafauna from Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) remain unresolved. Extinction hypotheses have advanced climate or human-driven scenarios, in spite of over three quarters of Sahul lacking reliable biogeographic or chronologic data. Here we present new megafauna from north-eastern Australia that suffered extinction sometime after 40,100 (±1700) years ago. Megafauna fossils preserved alongside leaves, seeds, pollen and insects, indicate a sclerophyllous forest with heathy understorey that was home to aquatic and terrestrial carnivorous reptiles and megaherbivores, including the world's largest kangaroo. Megafauna species diversity is greater compared to southern sites of similar age, which is contrary to expectations if extinctions followed proposed migration routes for people across Sahul. Our results do not support rapid or synchronous human-mediated continental-wide extinction, or the proposed timing of peak extinction events. Instead, megafauna extinctions coincide with regionally staggered spatio-temporal deterioration in hydroclimate coupled with sustained environmental change.
对于来自萨赫尔（澳大利亚和新几内亚）的上新世巨型动物灭绝的解释仍然没有定论。尽管萨赫尔超过四分之三的地区缺乏可靠的生物地理或年代数据，但灭绝假说还是提出了气候或人类驱动的情景。在这里，我们展示了来自澳大利亚东北部的新巨型动物化石，这些化石在 40100（±1700）年前的某个时间灭绝。与叶子、种子、花粉和昆虫一起保存的巨型动物化石表明，这里曾经存在一种硬叶森林，林下有茂密的灌丛，是水生和陆生食肉爬行动物以及巨型食草动物的家园，其中包括世界上最大的袋鼠。与年龄相似的南部地区相比，巨型动物的物种多样性更大，如果灭绝是按照人类在萨赫尔大陆上的迁徙路线进行的，这与预期不符。我们的结果不支持快速或同步的人类介导的大陆范围灭绝，也不支持提出的灭绝事件峰值的时间。相反，巨型动物的灭绝与区域上错开的水文气候恶化以及持续的环境变化同时发生。
