TY - JOUR
T1 - Rapid megafaunal extinction following human arrival throughout the New World
AU - Johnson, Chris N.
AU - Bradshaw, Corey J.A.
AU - Cooper, Alan
AU - Gillespie, Richard
AU - Brook, Barry W.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Lima-Ribeiro and Diniz-Filho (2013) present a new compilation and analysis of the chronologies of human arrival and megafaunal extinction throughout the Americas. They find that in many places megafauna were apparently extinct before humans arrived; in many others, megafauna coexisted with humans for thousands of years before going extinct. They conclude that human impact made at most a minor and geographically restricted contribution to megafaunal extinction. We argue that Lima-Ribeiro and Diniz-Filho's (2013) conclusions are unreliable because they have not adequately accounted for uncertainties and biases that affect the estimation of extinction dates from fossil data and human-arrival dates from archeological data. We re-analyze their data taking these problems into account, and reach the opposite conclusion to theirs: extinction consistently followed human arrival with a delay of around one or two thousand years, in agreement with the overkill model of megafaunal extinction.
AB - Lima-Ribeiro and Diniz-Filho (2013) present a new compilation and analysis of the chronologies of human arrival and megafaunal extinction throughout the Americas. They find that in many places megafauna were apparently extinct before humans arrived; in many others, megafauna coexisted with humans for thousands of years before going extinct. They conclude that human impact made at most a minor and geographically restricted contribution to megafaunal extinction. We argue that Lima-Ribeiro and Diniz-Filho's (2013) conclusions are unreliable because they have not adequately accounted for uncertainties and biases that affect the estimation of extinction dates from fossil data and human-arrival dates from archeological data. We re-analyze their data taking these problems into account, and reach the opposite conclusion to theirs: extinction consistently followed human arrival with a delay of around one or two thousand years, in agreement with the overkill model of megafaunal extinction.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84884351219&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.quaint.2013.06.022
DO - 10.1016/j.quaint.2013.06.022
M3 - Article
SN - 1040-6182
VL - 308-309
SP - 273
EP - 277
JO - Quaternary International
JF - Quaternary International
ER -