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首页> 外文期刊>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America >Late-surviving megafauna in Tasmania, Australia, implicate human involvement in their extinction
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Late-surviving megafauna in Tasmania, Australia, implicate human involvement in their extinction

机译：澳大利亚塔斯马尼亚州的大型动物群生存较晚，暗示人类参与了其灭绝

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Establishing the cause of past extinctions is critical if we are to understand better what might trigger future occurrences and how to prevent them. The mechanisms of continental late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction, however, are still fiercely contested. Potential factors contributing to their demise include climatic change, human impact, or some combination. On the Australian mainland, 90% of the megafauna became extinct by ≈ 46 thousand years (ka) ago, soon after the first archaeological evidence for human colonization of the continent. Yet, on the neighboring island of Tasmania (which was connected to the mainland when sea levels were lower), megafaunal extinction appears to have taken place before the initial human arrival between 43 and 40 ka, which would seem to exonerate people as a contributing factor in the extirpation of the island megafauna. Age estimates for the last megafauna, however, are poorly constrained. Here, we show, by direct dating of fossil remains and their associated sediments, that some Tasmanian megafauna survived until at least 41 ka (i.e., after their extinction on the Australian mainland) and thus overlapped with humans. Furthermore, a vegetation record for Tasmania spanning the last 130 ka shows that no significant regional climatic or environmental change occurred between 43 and 37 ka, when a land bridge existed between Tasmania and the mainland. Our results are consistent with a model of human-induced extinction for the Tasmanian megafauna, most probably driven by hunting, and they reaffirm the value of islands adjacent to continental landmasses as tests of competing hypotheses for late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions.
机译：如果我们要更好地了解可能触发未来事件的原因以及如何防止它们发生，那么确定过去灭绝的原因至关重要。然而，大陆晚更新世巨真菌灭绝的机制仍在激烈争论。导致其死亡的潜在因素包括气候变化，人类影响或某种综合影响。在澳大利亚大陆上，在第一个考古学证据表明人类在非洲大陆定殖后不久，大约4.6万年前，大型动物就有90％灭绝了。但是，在邻近的塔斯马尼亚岛（海平面较低时与大陆相连）上，巨型动物的灭绝似乎是在人类最初抵达43至40 ka之前发生的，这似乎使人们免于灭绝。在岛上的大型动物绝种。但是，对最后一个大型动物的年龄估计没有严格限制。在这里，我们通过对化石残骸及其相关沉积物的直接年代测定表明，一些塔斯马尼亚大型动物存活到至少41 ka（即在澳大利亚大陆灭绝后），因此与人类重叠。此外，塔斯马尼亚岛最近130 ka的植被记录表明，当塔斯马尼亚岛与大陆之间存在陆桥时，在43和37 ka之间没有发生明显的区域气候或环境变化。我们的结果与塔斯马尼亚大型动物的人类灭绝模型（最有可能是由狩猎驱动）一致，并且他们重​​申了与大陆陆块相邻的岛屿的价值，作为对第四纪晚期大型动物灭绝的竞争假设的检验。

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