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New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago
Abstract
All Australian land mammals, reptiles, and birds weighing more than 100 kilograms, and six of the seven genera with a body mass of 45 to 100 kilograms, perished in the late Quaternary. The timing and causes of these extinctions remain uncertain. We report burial ages for megafauna from 28 sites and infer extinction across the continent around 46,400 years ago (95% confidence interval, 51,200 to 39,800 years ago). Our results rule out extreme aridity at the Last Glacial Maximum as the cause of extinction, but not other climatic impacts; a “blitzkrieg” model of human-induced extinction; or an extended period of anthropogenic ecosystem disruption.
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Citations
Cited by
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Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. J., & McNeill, J. R. (2007) · AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment · doi:10.1579/0044-7447(2007)36[614:taahno]2.0.co;2 · Cited by 3,487
The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives
Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P., & McNeill, J. (2011) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences · doi:10.1098/rsta.2010.0327 · Cited by 2,411
Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean
McCauley, D. J., Pinsky, M. L., Palumbi, S. R., Estes, J. A., Joyce, F. H., & Warner, R. R. (2015) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1255641 · Cited by 1,305
Assessing the Causes of Late Pleistocene Extinctions on the Continents
Barnosky, A. D., Koch, P. L., Feranec, R. S., Wing, S. L., & Shabel, A. B. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1101476 · Cited by 1,084
Avian Extinction and Mammalian Introductions on Oceanic Islands
Blackburn, T. M., Cassey, P., Duncan, R. P., Evans, K. L., & Gaston, K. J. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1101617 · Cited by 894
Metadata
- Authors
- Roberts, R. G., Flannery, T. F., Ayliffe, L. K., Yoshida, H., Olley, J. M., Prideaux, G. J., Laslett, G. M., Baynes, A., Smith, M. A., Jones, R., & Smith, B. L.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2001-06-08
- Volume
- 292
- Issue
- 5523
- Pages
- 1888-1892
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2136670936
- Cited by
- 537
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 117.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1060264
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- Roberts, R. G., Flannery, T. F., Ayliffe, L. K., Yoshida, H., Olley, J. M., Prideaux, G. J., Laslett, G. M., Baynes, A., Smith, M. A., Jones, R., & Smith, B. L. (2001). New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1060264
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
