Rapid range shifts and megafaunal extinctions associated with late Pleistocene climate change

Large-scale changes in global climate at the end of the Pleistocene significantly impacted ecosystems across North America. However, the pace and scale of biotic turnover in response to both the Younger Dryas cold period and subsequent Holocene rapid warming have been challenging to assess because of the scarcity of well dated fossil and pollen records that covers this period. Here we present an ancient DNA record from Hall's Cave, Texas, that documents 100 vertebrate and 45 plant taxa from bulk fossils and sediment. We show that local plant and animal diversity dropped markedly during Younger Dryas cooling, but while plant diversity recovered in the early Holocene, animal diversity did not. Instead, five extant and nine extinct large bodied animals disappeared from the region at the end of the Pleistocene. Our findings suggest that climate change affected the local ecosystem in Texas over the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, but climate change on its own may not explain the disappearance of the megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene.This study was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP160104473, Forrest Research Foundation (to F.V.S.); field work in 2016 was funded by Stafford Research LLC

Plio-Pleistocene climatic change had a major impact on the assembly and disassembly processes of Iberian rodent communities

Comprehension of changes in community composition through multiple spatio-temporal scales is a prime challenge in ecology and palaeobiology. However, assembly, structuring and disassembly of biotic metacommunities in deep-time is insufficiently known. To address this, we used the extensively sampled Iberian Plio-Pleistocene fossil record of rodent faunas as our model system to explore how global climatic events may alter metacommunity structure. Through factor analysis, we found five sets of genera, called faunal components, which co-vary in proportional diversity over time. These faunal components had different spatio-temporal distributions throughout the Plio-Pleistocene, resulting in non-random changes in species assemblages, particularly in response to the development of the Pleistocene glaciations. Three successive metacommunities with distinctive taxonomic structures were identified as a consequence of the differential responses of their members to global climatic change: (1) Ruscinian subtropical faunas (5.3–3.4 Ma) dominated by a faunal component that can be considered as a Miocene legacy; (2) transition faunas during the Villafranchian–Biharian (3.4–0.8 Ma) with a mixture of different faunal components; and (3) final dominance of the temperate Toringian faunas (0.8–0.01 Ma) that would lead to the modern Iberian assemblage. The influence of the cooling global temperature drove the reorganisation of these rodent metacommunities. Selective extinction processes due to this large-scale environmental disturbance progressively eliminated the subtropical specialist species from the early Pliocene metacommunity. This disassembly process was accompanied by the organisation of a diversified metacommunity with an increased importance of biome generalist species, and finally followed by the assembly during the middle–late Pleistocene of a new set of species specialised in the novel environments developed as a consequence of the glaciations

Letter to H.B. Stenzel from Ernest L. Lundelius on 1959-02-13

Jackson School of Geoscience

Letter to H.B. Stenzel from Ernest L. Lundelius, Jr. on 1961-03-21

Jackson School of Geoscience

Fossil vertebrates from the late Pleistocene Ingleside fauna, San Patricio County, Texas

UT Librarie

Vertebrate remains from the Nullarbor Caves, Western Australia

Volume: 46Start Page: 75End Page: 8

Notes on the skulls of two Western Australian rodents with a key to the skulls of the rodents, of southwestern Australia

Volume: 47Start Page: 65End Page: 7

Mylohyus Nasutus: Long-nosed Peccary of the Texas Plesitocene

Table of Contents : Introduction -- The Friesenhahn Remains -- The Species of Mylohyus -- Relationships -- Distribution and Ecology -- Appendix -- ReferencesTexas Memorial Museu

Leporillus (Rodentia: Muridae) from Madura Cave, W.A

Volume: 121Start Page: 129End Page: 14

A Pleistocene marsupial fauna from Limeburner\u27s Point, Victoria, Australia

Volume: 9Start Page: 143End Page: 17