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The Royal Society, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 1824(283), p. 20152399, 2016

DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.2399

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What caused extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna of Sahul?

Journal article published in 2016 by Johnson Cn, Chris N. Johnson, John Alroy, Nj J. Beeton, Mi I. Bird, Bw W. Brook, Miller Gh, Alan Cooper, Richard Gillespie ORCID, S. Herrando Perez, Prideaux Gj, Zenobia Jacobs, Gifford H. Miller, Gavin J. Prideaux, Richard G. Roberts ORCID and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

2016 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. During the Pleistocene, Australia and New Guinea supported a rich assemblage of large vertebrates. Why these animals disappeared has been debated for more than a century and remains controversial. Previous synthetic reviews of this problem have typically focused heavily on particular types of evidence, such as the dating of extinction and human arrival, and have frequently ignored uncertainties and biases that can lead to misinterpretation of this evidence. Here, we review diverse evidence bearing on this issue and conclude that, although many knowledge gaps remain, multiple independent lines of evidence point to direct human impact as the most likely cause of extinction.