Evol Ecol Res 6: 339-358 (2004)     Full PDF if your library subscribes.

Of mice, mastodons and men: human-mediated extinctions on four continents

S. Kathleen Lyons,* Felisa A. Smith and James H. Brown

Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA

Address all correspondence to S. Kathleen Lyons, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, USA.
e-mail: lyons@nceas.ucsb.edu

ABSTRACT

Numerous anthropological and ecological hypotheses have been proposed to explain the extinction of many large-bodied mammals at the terminal Pleistocene. We find that body size distributions of all mammals in North America, South America, Africa and Australia before and after the late Pleistocene show a similar large-size selectivity of extinctions across continents, despite differences in timing. All extinctions coincide with the colonization of the continent by aboriginal man, but only two coincide with periods of climate change. Further, historical (within the last 300 years) extinctions in Australia demonstrate a higher susceptibility of small and medium-sized mammals. On all four continents, large-bodied Recent mammals are threatened by human hunting practices, whereas small-bodied species are not. We conclude that the late Pleistocene extinctions were caused primarily by anthropogenic factors such as human hunting, whereas historical extinctions were due mostly to habitat alteration and exotic species introductions.

Keywords: body size distributions, climate change, human hunting, late Pleistocene, megafaunal extinction, size-biased extinction.

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        © 2004 S. Kathleen Lyons. All EER articles are copyrighted by their authors. All authors endorse, permit and license Evolutionary Ecology Ltd. to grant its subscribing institutions/libraries the copying privileges specified below without additional consideration or payment to them or to Evolutionary Ecology, Ltd. These endorsements, in writing, are on file in the office of Evolutionary Ecology, Ltd. Consult authors for permission to use any portion of their work in derivative works, compilations or to distribute their work in any commercial manner.

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