holocene extinctions sep 2009

[...]... years (11.5 ka) before present (bp) The Holocene is the most recent geological epoch of the Quaternary Period (the past 2.6 million years), which itself is characterized by glacialinterglacial cycles The Holocene is the Earths most recent interglacial: a climatically warm interval that separates cooler glacials (or ice ages) Accurately dating the start of the Holocene has proved challenging For example,... (Grayson 1984) Huge numbers of continuing prehistoric vertebrate extinctions and large-scale range contractions have also been documented throughout the subsequent Holocene Epoch, across a wide range of body-size classes and taxonomic groups and across both insular and continental regions (Fig 2.1) Unlike the Late Pleistocene extinctions, these Holocene events all occurred during an interval of modest or... centuries after the end of the Younger Dryas, probably reflecting a delay in the Holocene vegetational succession (Coard and Chamberlain 1999; Hewitt 1999), evidence for direct human involvement in these extinctions and population shiftsthrough 17 18 HOLOCENE EX TINCTIONS 12 000 10 000 Calendar yr BP 8000 6000 4000 2000 Present day Holocene Megaloceros giganteus Taimyr St Paul Mammuthus primigenius Wrangel... since the end of the last glaciation It is hoped that this assessment of our current understanding of Holocene extinctions will encourage further attempts to reconstruct the diversity, ecology, and fate of prehuman Quaternary faunas IN T HE SH A D OW OF T HE MEG A FAUN A 2.2 Staggered PleistoceneHolocene extinctions of continental mammals and birds The dominant palaeontological paradigm for understanding... complete extinction during the Holocene (e.g lion Panthera leo, present in southern Europe until ad 80100 and the Caucasus region until the tenth century ad; Nowell and Jackson 1996; Sommer and Benecke 2006) 2.2.2 North America and Australia: limited prehistoric extinctions Similar patterns of terrestrial vertebrate declines and extinctions are shown by the relatively wellstudied Holocene palaeontological,... that may be a European wild ass or zebro Equus hydruntinus From Antunes (2006) 22 HOLOCENE EX TINCTIONS have escalated (Morrison et al 2007), although other local extinctions reflect climatic changes across the Holocene (e.g Grayson 2000, 2005) The most significant and chronostratigraphically earliest faunal changes in Holocene midden sequences consistently show reductions of both terrestrial and coastal... prehistoric Holocene mammal and bird extinctions in other continental regions remains poorly understood Direct radiometric dating and other dates derived from deposits containing extinct species have frequently been interpreted as evidence for the survival of several members of the South American megafauna (e.g horses, camelids, ground sloths) into the early or mid Holocene (Table 2.1) These supposed Holocene. .. South American mammal extinctions, and in particular to re-analyse anomalous Holocene radiometric dates 23 to assess the possibility of contamination (see also Stuart 1991 for review of similar poorly supported Holocene radiometric dates for several North American megafaunal species, e.g Mammut americanum) The only now-extinct mammal species that probably survived until the midlate Holocene in continental... this book will deal with ecosystem resilience, ecosystem change, and concomitant species extinctions throughout the Late GlacialHolocene intervals This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 2 In the shadow of the megafauna: prehistoric mammal and bird extinctions across the Holocene Samuel T Turvey 2.1 Introduction The last 500 years of the historical era, an interval that corresponds with the concerted... Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 029121846, USA CHAPTER 1 An introduction to Late GlacialHolocene environments Anson W Mackay 1.1 Introduction The term Holocene was first coined in the early nineteenth century and was adopted in Bologna by the International Geological Congress in 1885 The Holocene (also known as the Postglacial or the Flandrian) is one of the most easily identified features . Turvey 4 Holocene avian extinctions 63 Tommy Tyrberg 5 Past and future patterns of freshwater mussel extinctions in North America during the Holocene 107 Wendell R. Haag 6 Holocene extinctions. Glacial Holocene environments 1 Anson W. Mackay 2 In the shadow of the megafauna: prehistoric mammal and bird extinctions across the Holocene 17 Samuel T. Turvey 3 Holocene mammal extinctions.