Data from: Climate warming and humans played different roles in triggering Late Quaternary extinctions in east and west Eurasia

Climate change and humans are proposed as the two key drivers of total
extinction of many large mammals in the Late Pleistocene and Early
Holocene, but disentangling their relative roles remains challenging owing
to a lack of quantitative evaluation of human impact and climate-driven
distribution changes on the extinctions of these large mammals in a
continuous temporal–spatial dimension. Here, our analyses showed that
temperature change had significant effects on mammoth (genus Mammuthus),
rhinoceros (Rhinocerotidae), horse (Equidae) and deer (Cervidae). Rapid
global warming was the predominant factor driving the total extinction of
mammoths and rhinos in frigid zones from the Late Pleistocene and Early
Holocene. Humans showed significant, negative effects on extirpations of
the four mammalian taxa, and were the predominant factor causing the
extinction or major extirpations of rhinos and horses. Deer survived both
rapid climate warming and extensive human impacts. Our study indicates
that both the current rates of warming and range shifts of species are
much faster than those from the Late Pleistocene to Holocene. Our results
provide new insight into the extinction of Late Quaternary megafauna by
demonstrating taxon-, period- and region-specific differences in
extinction drivers of climate change and human disturbances, and some
implications about the extinction risk of animals by recent and ongoing
climate warming.