Pleistocene Extinctions: Haunting the Survivors

نویسنده

  • Michael Hofreiter
چکیده

For many years, the megafaunal extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene have been assumed to have affected only those species that became extinct. However, recent analyses show that the surviving species may also have experienced losses in terms of genetic and ecological diversity.

برای دانلود رایگان متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Of mice, mastodons and men: human-mediated extinctions on four continents

Numerous anthropological and ecological hypotheses have been proposed to explain the extinction of many large-bodied mammals at the terminal Pleistocene. We find that body size distributions of all mammals in North America, South America, Africa and Australia before and after the late Pleistocene show a similar large-size selectivity of extinctions across continents, despite differences in timi...

متن کامل

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW of Biology A REVIEW AND SYNTHESIS OF LATE PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTION MODELING: PROGRESS DELAYED BY MISMATCHES BETWEEN ECOLOGICAL REALISM, INTERPRETATION, AND METHODOLOGICAL TRANSPARENCY

Late Pleistocene extinctions occurred globally over a period of about 50,000 years, primarily affecting mammals of 44 kg body mass (i.e., megafauna) first in Australia, continuing in Eurasia and, finally, in the Americas. Polarized debate about the cause(s) of the extinctions centers on the role of climate change and anthropogenic factors (especially hunting). Since the late 1960s, investigator...

متن کامل

Serial population extinctions in a small mammal indicate Late Pleistocene ecosystem instability.

The Late Pleistocene global extinction of many terrestrial mammal species has been a subject of intensive scientific study for over a century, yet the relative contributions of environmental changes and the global expansion of humans remain unresolved. A defining component of these extinctions is a bias toward large species, with the majority of small-mammal taxa apparently surviving into the p...

متن کامل

Megafaunal Extinctions and the Disappearance of a Specialized Wolf Ecomorph

The gray wolf (Canis lupus) is one of the few large predators to survive the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions [1]. Nevertheless, wolves disappeared from northern North America in the Late Pleistocene, suggesting they were affected by factors that eliminated other species. Using skeletal material collected from Pleistocene permafrost deposits of eastern Beringia, we present a comprehensiv...

متن کامل

Evolution in coyotes (Canis latrans) in response to the megafaunal extinctions.

Living coyotes modify their behavior in the presence of larger carnivores, such as wolves. However, little is known about the effects of competitor presence or absence on morphological change in coyotes or wolves over long periods of time. We examined the evolution of coyotes and wolves through time from the late Pleistocene, during which many large carnivorous species coexisted as predators an...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Current Biology

دوره 17  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2007