LATE PLEISTOCENE ZELKOVA EXTINCTION IN CENTRAL ITALY

Was a hyperdisease responsible for the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction?

S. Kathleen Lyons,* Felisa A. Smith, Peter J. Wagner, Ethan P. White and James H. Brown Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA Department of Geology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 60605, USA Present address: S. Kathleen Lyons, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California – Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 931...

On the size selectivity of extinction in Late Pleistocene mammals: a mini-forum based on Polishchuk

Dietary controls on extinction versus survival among avian megafauna in the late Pleistocene

The late Pleistocene extinction decimated terrestrial megafaunal communities in North America, but did not affect marine mammal populations. In coastal regions, marine megafauna may have provided a buffer that allowed some large predators or scavengers, such as California condors (Gymnogyps californianus), to survive into the Holocene. To track the influence of marine resources on avifaunas we ...

Cougars' key to survival through the Late Pleistocene extinction: insights from dental microwear texture analysis.

Cougars (Puma concolor) are one of only two large cats in North America to have survived the Late Pleistocene extinction (LPE), yet the specific key(s) to their relative success remains unknown. Here, we compare the dental microwear textures of Pleistocene cougars with sympatric felids from the La Brea Tar Pits in southern California that went extinct at the LPE (Panthera atrox and Smilodon fat...

The Late-Pleistocene extinction of megafauna compared with the growth of human population

Human influence on the environment is now so strong that a new geological era has been proposed (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000), the Anthropocene, the Age of Man, the era shaped strongly, for the first time in human history, by humans. It is largely a destructive influence (Nielsen, 2005, 2006, 2007) threatening our own existence, the influence reflected in the human-mediated climate change, in the ...