ArticleNature communications2020
Extinction of eastern Sahul megafauna coincides with sustained environmental deterioration.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Middle Holocene survival of marsupial megafauna on the north coast of New Guinea.npj biodiversity · 2026Article
- Australia's First Peoples: hunters of extinct megafauna or Australia's first fossil collectors.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Using sedimentary ancient DNA in coastal and marine contexts to explore past human-environmental interactions in Australia.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Genome of the endangered eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) reveals signatures of historical decline and pelage color evolution.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Physiography, foraging mobility, and the first peopling of Sahul.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2024Review
- Thirty years of ancient DNA and the faunal biogeography of Aotearoa New Zealand: lessons and future directions.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2024Review
- Reconstructing Pleistocene Australian herbivore megafauna diet using calcium and strontium isotopes.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Description of the Pliocene marsupialRoyal Society open science · 2023Article
- Back to the future: The advantage of studying key events in human evolution using a new high resolution radiocarbon method.PloS one · 2023Review
- Time-calibrated phylogeny and ecological niche models indicate Pliocene aridification drove intraspecific diversification of brushtail possums in Australia.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Ancient proteins resolve controversy over the identity ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Miocene fossils from the southeastern Pacific shed light on the last radiation of marine crocodylians.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Divergent locomotor evolution in "giant" kangaroos: Evidence from foot bone bending resistances and microanatomy.Journal of morphology · 2022Article
- Comment on "A global environmental crisis 42,000 years ago".Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2021Article
- Species identification of Australian marsupials using collagen fingerprinting.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Low elbow mobility indicates unique forelimb posture and function in a giant extinct marsupial.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- Article
- A new giant sauropod,PeerJ · 2021Article
- Australia's prehistoric 'swamp king': revision of the Plio-Pleistocene crocodylian genusPeerJ · 2020Article
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12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
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