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

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...

在第四纪晚期，萨赫尔（更新世澳大利亚–新几内亚）的脊椎动物群以多种大型哺乳动物、鸟类和爬行动物为主，这些动物通常被称为巨型动物群（megafauna）。自约450–400千年（ka）以来，萨赫尔地区约有88个物种消失，包括体重超过200公斤的袋鼠、河马大小的袋熊类动物、不会飞的鸟类以及可能带毒的巨型巨蜥。关于这些灭绝事件主因的争论持续至今，通常倾向于气候变化或人类活动两种假说。随着更精细的古环境数据集不断涌现，加深对已灭绝巨型动物群种群生物学的理解，将有助于识别它们潜在的脆弱性。在此，我们采用多代理（multiproxy）方法分析澳大利亚东南部库迪泉（Cuddie Springs）中更新世至晚更新世沉积物中的化石牙齿，通过氧同位素评估相对干旱程度，并利用...分析植被与巨型动物群的饮食结构。