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Late Pleistocene extinctions

The Late Pleistocene extinctions, part of the broader Quaternary extinction event, involved the global decline and disappearance of numerous megafaunal species—primarily mammals exceeding 44 kg in body mass—over approximately the last 50,000 years of the Pleistocene epoch, with the most intense losses occurring between about 50,000 and 10,000 years ago.^[1] These extinctions affected diverse ecosystems across continents, eliminating over 90% of large-bodied vertebrates in regions like Australia and leading to the loss of 35 genera in North America alone, marking one of the most profound biotic turnovers in Earth's history.^[2]^[3] The timing of these extinctions varied regionally, reflecting differences in human arrival, climate shifts, and environmental pressures. In Australia (Sahul), megafaunal losses peaked around 46,000 to 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the arrival of modern humans and increased aridity, resulting in the extinction of nearly all terrestrial species over 50 kg, including giant marsupials like Diprotodon and giant kangaroos like Procoptodon.^[2]^[4] In northern Eurasia, extinctions were more gradual and occurred in two phases: an earlier pulse around 30,000 to 24,000 years before present (BP) affecting species like cave hyenas, followed by later losses of woolly mammoths and rhinoceroses around 14,000 to 10,000 years BP during the transition to the Holocene.^[5] The Americas experienced the most synchronous event, with 35 genera in North America vanishing abruptly between approximately 13,800 and 11,400 calendar years BP, including mammoths (Mammuthus), mastodons (Mammut), and ground sloths (Megalonyx).^[3] Overall, these losses were most severe in isolated continents like Australia and the Americas, moderate in Eurasia, and minimal in Africa, where many megafauna coexisted longer with humans.^[6] Iconic species lost included North American giants such as the saber-toothed cat (Smilodon fatalis), short-faced bear (Arctodus simus), and American camel (Camelops), alongside South American forms like Glyptodon (giant armadillo) and Toxodon (ox-like ungulate), and Eurasian woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis).^[3] In Australia, extinctions targeted unique marsupial megafauna, such as the up to 600-kg Megalania (giant monitor lizard) and thunder bird Dromornis stirtoni.^[2] These disappearances not only reshaped mammalian communities but also had cascading ecological effects, such as altered vegetation dynamics and reduced seed dispersal, influencing modern biomes.^[7] The causes remain intensely debated, with evidence supporting a combination of factors rather than a single driver. Climate change at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, including rapid warming and the Younger Dryas cold snap around 12,900 to 11,700 years BP, stressed habitats and vegetation, contributing to declines in cold-adapted species.^[3] Human activities, particularly overhunting by expanding Homo sapiens populations—termed the "overkill" hypothesis—correlated strongly with extinction timings, as seen in the rapid losses following human colonization of new continents.^[1] Other proposed mechanisms include disease transmission ("hyperdisease") and even extraterrestrial impacts, though the synchronicity in the Americas points to multifaceted interactions between humans and environmental variability.^[3] No single model fully explains the global pattern, but anthropogenic influence is increasingly viewed as a key amplifier of natural stressors.^[8]

Introduction

Chronology and Scope

The Late Pleistocene epoch, spanning approximately 129,000 to 11,700 years ago, marked a period of significant climatic fluctuations and biotic changes, culminating in widespread extinctions of large-bodied animals.^[9] The primary pulse of these extinctions occurred between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, affecting terrestrial vertebrates globally during the transition to the Holocene.^[10] This timeframe encompassed key climatic events, including early human dispersals into previously unoccupied regions—such as Sahul around 45,000–50,000 years ago, though recent genetic evidence (as of 2025) suggests a later arrival near 50,000 years ago—the Last Glacial Maximum from 26,500 to 19,000 years ago, and the abrupt Younger Dryas cooling episode between 12,900 and 11,700 years ago.^[11]^[12]^[13]^[14] The extinctions primarily targeted megafauna, defined as vertebrates with adult body masses exceeding 44 kg, resulting in the loss of approximately 65% of such genera worldwide.^[15] Extinction rates were notably higher in isolated biogeographic regions, reaching about 88% of large mammal genera in Australia.^[10] These losses manifested in distinct temporal waves, such as those around 40,000–50,000 years ago in Australia following human arrival, and approximately 12,000 years ago across the Americas coinciding with the end of the Pleistocene.^[10]^[16] The global scope underscores a selective impact on large herbivores and carnivores, reshaping continental ecosystems without equally affecting smaller taxa.^[15]

Affected Taxa and Magnitude

The Late Pleistocene extinctions primarily affected megafaunal mammals, defined as species exceeding 44 kg in body mass, with profound losses among orders such as Proboscidea (e.g., woolly mammoths Mammuthus primigenius and mastodons Mammut americanum), Perissodactyla (e.g., woolly rhinoceros Coelodonta antiquitatis), and Carnivora (e.g., saber-toothed cats like Smilodon fatalis and American lion Panthera atrox). These extinctions targeted large herbivores and their predators, leading to the collapse of iconic Ice Age faunas across multiple continents.^[17]^[18] Globally, the event resulted in the extinction of over 100 mammalian genera, comprising approximately two-thirds of all large mammal genera, alongside more than 178 species weighing over 44 kg.^[17] Regional magnitudes varied significantly, with South America experiencing the highest loss at 83% of genera, followed by Australia at 88% and North America at 72%; in contrast, Eurasia and Africa saw lower rates of 35% and 21%, respectively.^[17] Smaller-bodied mammals under 44 kg were largely unaffected, highlighting a strong size bias in the extinctions.^[17]^[10] Although mammals dominated the losses, non-mammalian megafauna were also impacted, including flightless birds such as the Australian mihirung (Genyornis newtoni) and South American terror birds (Psilopterus spp.), as well as large reptiles like giant tortoises and monitor lizards (Varanus spp.) in Australasia.^[19] Island forms, including moas (Dinornithiformes) in the Pacific and elephant birds (Aepyornithiformes) on Madagascar, suffered near-total elimination, though many of these occurred slightly later into the Holocene.^[19] Recent phylogenetic analyses from 2020–2025 underscore how specific traits amplified vulnerability, with large body size showing a significant positive association with extinction probability (effect size 1.56) and longer generation times—indicative of low reproductive rates—correlating with elevated risk in regions like Sahul (effect size 0.67).^[20] These findings suggest that such traits could increase extinction odds by factors of 1.5 to 2 or more in the context of human pressures, reinforcing the selective nature of the event.^[20]

Patterns of Extinction

Global Overview

The Late Pleistocene extinctions, occurring primarily between approximately 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, represent a major global event characterized by the loss of numerous large-bodied vertebrate species, particularly mammals. These extinctions were clustered temporally with the expansion of human populations and associated climatic fluctuations at the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Worldwide, roughly 32% of all mammal species weighing 9 kg or more became extinct, with the proportion rising to 52% for those exceeding 45 kg, highlighting a strong size-selective bias toward megafauna.^[21] This event affected diverse taxa, including proboscideans, perissodactyls, and carnivores, across terrestrial ecosystems.^[22] Disproportionate extinction impacts were evident across biogeographic regions, with higher rates in areas of late human colonization such as the Americas and Australia (Sahul), where up to 80% of megafaunal genera were lost shortly following Homo sapiens arrival. In contrast, regions with prolonged human occupation, like Africa, experienced lower extinction rates—around 13-21% of large mammal species—likely due to extended coevolutionary dynamics between hominins and fauna. Islands and isolated continents generally saw more rapid and severe losses compared to long-inhabited mainland areas.^[18]^[21] Recent research from 2023 to 2025, incorporating genomic analyses of extant megafauna, reinforces the role of human range expansion in driving these losses, with population declines accelerating globally around 48-52 thousand years ago but occurring in staggered patterns rather than a single pulse. These studies, using methods like pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent modeling on 139 species, indicate that human dispersal better explains the timing and geography of declines than climatic factors alone. Maps and timelines of extinction rates often illustrate this by overlaying human migration routes with dated fossil records, revealing synchronous peaks in unoccupied regions.^[22]^[21]

Temporal and Spatial Variations

The Late Pleistocene extinctions displayed marked temporal variations, with distinct pulses occurring at different intervals across continents. In Sahul (the combined landmass of Australia and New Guinea), megafaunal losses began early, around 46,000 years ago, shortly following human arrival and continuing through the subsequent millennia.^[23] In Eurasia, extinctions accelerated during the mid-to-late phase of the period, with a notable pulse around 30,000 years ago amid fluctuating climates and expanding human populations.^[24] A more concentrated late pulse struck the Americas between approximately 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, aligning with the final stages of the Pleistocene and the spread of Clovis culture.^[10] Spatially, these extinctions did not occur uniformly but followed a progressive wave pattern, propagating outward from initial human entry points and along migration corridors, resulting in staggered impacts across biogeographic realms.^[10] This non-synchronous distribution created heterogeneous extinction intensities, with lower rates in areas of long human-megafauna coexistence, such as African refugia, where co-evolutionary adaptations reduced vulnerability to anthropogenic pressures.^[25] Quantitative differences further underscored these variations; Sahul experienced the extinction of its remaining megafauna, with approximately 13 large species disappearing shortly after human arrival around 46,000 years ago, marking one of the most abrupt regional megafaunal collapses.^[26] In contrast, Eurasia lost about 35-40% of its megafaunal genera, a moderated toll attributable to greater habitat connectivity and persistence of some lineages into the Holocene.^[24] Recent studies from 2022 to 2025, incorporating spatiotemporal modeling of human expansion and climatic shifts, have highlighted how synergies between these factors amplified spatial heterogeneity, with extinction risks peaking in newly colonized, climatically unstable zones; studies from 2024-2025, including phylogenetic trait analyses, further support staggered extinction patterns linked to human expansion and environmental instability (as of November 2025).^[27]^[20]

Extinctions by Biogeographic Realm

Africa

In Africa, the Late Pleistocene extinctions had a comparatively mild impact on megafaunal diversity, with approximately 18% of megafaunal genera (>44 kg body mass) lost, in contrast to a global rate exceeding 65%. This lower extinction intensity allowed many charismatic large mammals, such as elephants (Loxodonta africana and Loxodonta cyclotis), white and black rhinoceroses (Ceratotherium simum and Diceros bicornis), and the common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), to persist into the present day. The survival of these species is attributed to behavioral adaptations developed through extended coevolution with hominins, including early Homo sapiens, which reduced their vulnerability to human predation compared to faunas in regions where humans arrived more recently. Key losses among African megafauna included around five genera, notably the giant buffalo Pelorovis antiquus, which weighed up to 2,000 kg and featured massive horns spanning over 2 meters; long-horned antelopes such as Megalotragus (a giant hartebeest relative) and Parmularius; and wild cattle of the genus Bos. Extinct hippopotamid taxa, including species like Hippopotamus protamphibius, also disappeared, representing early semi-aquatic forms that once diversified across African wetlands.^[28] These extinctions primarily occurred before 50,000 years ago, aligning with the expansion of anatomically modern Homo sapiens out of Africa around 200,000 years ago, though a minimal late pulse affected a few taxa into the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene.^[28] Fossil records from East African sites, such as those in the Rift Valley (e.g., Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora), document a gradual decline in megaherbivore diversity over the Plio-Pleistocene, with body sizes decreasing and grassland-adapted species persisting longer due to environmental shifts and early human pressures.^[29] This pattern underscores Africa's unique trajectory, where prolonged human-megafauna interactions filtered vulnerable taxa early, sparing a higher proportion of large-bodied survivors relative to the abrupt global losses elsewhere.^[29]

Eurasia

The Late Pleistocene extinctions in Eurasia affected a diverse array of megafauna across varied biomes, from the tundra-steppe of northern regions to the tropical forests and islands of the south and southeast. In Europe and northern Asia, prominent losses included the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which vanished around 12,000 years ago in western areas due to post-glacial warming, and persisted longer in isolated northern populations until approximately 4,000 years ago.^[30] The cave lion (Panthera spelaea), a large predator adapted to cold climates, went extinct around 13,000–14,000 years ago across its vast range from western Europe to Siberia, likely influenced by habitat contraction and prey decline.^[31] Similarly, the Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), a giant deer with impressive antlers, disappeared by about 7,700 years ago, marking the end of its presence in Eurasian grasslands and woodlands.^[10] In southern and southeastern Asia, extinctions targeted forest-dwelling and island-adapted species, including range contractions for orangutans (Pongo spp.), which saw their distribution shrink dramatically from continental areas to limited island refugia, alongside the extinction of giant deer like Sinomegaceros in eastern regions.^[32] Proboscideans such as Stegodon, including dwarf forms on islands in Wallacea, also succumbed, with fossils indicating their disappearance from sites like Sulawesi by around 40,000–50,000 years ago.^[33] Overall, Eurasia lost approximately 35–40% of its megafaunal genera, totaling around 26 genera affected through global, continental, and regional extirpations, a rate higher than Africa's 21% stability, where longer hominin coexistence buffered impacts.^[10] These losses occurred in a staggered pattern, beginning earlier in Southeast Asia around 60,000 years ago, coinciding with the arrival of Homo sapiens and associated environmental shifts, which contributed to the decline of tropical megafauna like Stegodon and early orangutan range reductions.^[33] In contrast, northern Eurasia experienced major extinctions later, around 14,000 years ago following the Last Glacial Maximum, as warming disrupted tundra ecosystems and affected cold-adapted species like the woolly mammoth and cave lion.^[30] The extinctions reflected hybrid drivers across Eurasia's biomes: in northern tundra and steppes, climate warming post-LGM played a dominant role in habitat loss for grazers and predators, while in southern forests and Wallacean islands, human expansion combined with sea-level changes and resource competition accelerated declines, as seen in the insular dwarfing and subsequent extinction of Stegodon populations isolated by rising waters.^[30] Island effects in Wallacea amplified vulnerability, with dwarf elephants evolving smaller body sizes due to limited resources and isolation, only to face extirpation as human activities intensified during the Late Pleistocene.^[33] Recent 2025 genomic analyses of North Asian and Beringian populations have illuminated human migration patterns, revealing gene flow from Siberian groups into eastern Eurasia around 23,000–13,900 years ago, which likely facilitated the spread of hunting pressures contributing to northern megafaunal losses during this terminal phase.^[34]

North America

The Late Pleistocene extinctions in North America were particularly severe, resulting in the loss of approximately 72% of large mammalian genera, or about 35 genera in total.^[35]^[36] Prominent among the extinct taxa were proboscideans such as mastodons (Mammut americanum) and mammoths (Mammuthus spp.), as well as giant ground sloths (Nothrotheriops shastensis), short-faced bears (Arctodus simus), and saber-toothed cats (Smilodon fatalis).^[36] These losses represented a profound restructuring of the continent's megafaunal communities, eliminating all native proboscideans and drastically reducing herbivore and carnivore diversity.^[16] The extinctions occurred primarily between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, a rapid pulse that overlapped with the arrival of Paleoindian hunters associated with the Clovis culture.^[37] Humans had entered North America via the Bering land bridge around 15,000 years ago, migrating from Eurasia during a period when lowered sea levels exposed the Beringia corridor.^[38] This human expansion coincided with the collapse of the expansive tundra-steppe ecosystem, known as the mammoth steppe, which supported high biomass of large herbivores across unglaciated regions but transitioned to more wooded and shrub-dominated landscapes post-extinction.^[39]^[40] Key fossil sites provide direct evidence of these events, including Blackwater Draw in New Mexico, where Clovis tools are found in association with mammoth remains, indicating human hunting of megafauna around 13,000 years ago.^[41] Similarly, the Rancho La Brea tar pits in California preserve thousands of specimens from extinct species like dire wolves (Canis dirus) and Smilodon, with radiocarbon dates showing a sharp decline in megafaunal representation by approximately 13,000 years ago.^[42] These localities highlight the spatial and temporal patterns of extinction across diverse North American habitats.^[43]

South America

The Late Pleistocene extinctions in South America were the most severe globally, resulting in the loss of approximately 83% of large mammal genera, exceeding rates observed elsewhere. This cataclysmic event eliminated over 50 genera of endemic megafauna, including iconic groups such as glyptodonts (armored herbivores resembling giant armadillos), toxodonts (rhinoceros-like notoungulates), giant armadillos like Doedicurus, and litopterns such as Macrauchenia, a camel-like browser. These losses transformed diverse ecosystems across the continent, particularly in open habitats where megafaunal abundance had previously shaped vegetation and soil dynamics. Unlike other regions, South America's extinctions highlighted the vulnerability of its unique placental and marsupial assemblages, which had diversified in isolation before the Great American Biotic Interchange. The extinctions occurred primarily between approximately 12,500 and 10,000 years ago, aligning closely with the arrival of humans via the Isthmus of Panama around 15,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence indicates that early human populations rapidly dispersed southward, encountering a landscape teeming with megafauna in biomes such as the expansive Pampas grasslands and the high-altitude Andean plateaus. A distinctive feature of South American megafauna was the relative scarcity of large native carnivores prior to human arrival, such as the limited distribution of saber-toothed cats and short-faced bears compared to northern continents; this left many herbivores evolutionarily naive to persistent, intelligent predation strategies, amplifying their susceptibility to human hunting. This naivety likely facilitated overhunting, as megafauna lacked behavioral adaptations to evade bipedal hunters using projectile weapons. Recent studies have illuminated direct human-megafauna interactions at early sites like Monte Verde in southern Chile, dated to around 14,500 years ago, where artifacts and faunal remains suggest exploitation of large herbivores shortly after human colonization. For instance, analyses of late Pleistocene archaeological assemblages reveal that extinct megafauna constituted a dominant component of human diets in southern South America before 11,600 years ago, underscoring the role of predation in the extinctions. These findings, integrating radiocarbon dating and stable isotope data, reinforce the temporal overlap between human expansion and megafaunal decline in key regions like Patagonia.

Sahul and Pacific Islands

The Late Pleistocene extinctions in Sahul, encompassing the Pleistocene landmass of Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania, led to the disappearance of approximately 88 large vertebrate taxa (>44 kg body mass), accounting for over 80% of the region's megafaunal diversity.^[44] Among the most iconic losses were massive herbivorous marsupials, including Diprotodon optatum (the largest known marsupial, reaching up to 3 tonnes and resembling a giant wombat), short-faced kangaroos of the family Procoptodontidae (some exceeding 200 kg), and the predatory marsupial lion Thylacoleo carnifex (a specialized carnivore weighing around 100-130 kg with powerful shearing teeth).^[44] These extinctions occurred rapidly, with most losses dated between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, closely following the arrival of anatomically modern humans around 65,000-50,000 years ago via island-hopping from Southeast Asia.^[26] Fossil evidence from sites like Lake Mungo in southeastern Australia documents temporal overlap between human occupation (dated to ~42,000 years ago) and persisting megafauna, highlighting the synchronicity of human colonization and faunal decline.^[45] Extinctions in the Pacific islands, including remote archipelagos colonized later by Austronesian and Polynesian voyagers, exhibited a staggered pattern extending into the Holocene, contrasting with Sahul's more abrupt Pleistocene event. Key losses involved endemic flightless birds, such as the nine species of moa (Dinornithiformes) in New Zealand, which stood up to 3.6 meters tall and weighed over 200 kg, and the elephant birds (Aepyornithidae) of Madagascar, giant ratites exceeding 500 kg that laid the largest eggs known from any vertebrate.^[46] Moa populations collapsed within centuries of Polynesian arrival around 1280-1300 CE, driven by overhunting and habitat clearance, while elephant birds persisted until about 1,000 years ago, shortly after human settlement of Madagascar around 10,500-2,500 years ago.^[47] Across the Pacific, human introductions of the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans)—transported unintentionally on canoes—exacerbated declines by preying on seeds, invertebrates, and small vertebrates, contributing to the extinction of numerous insular species on previously uninvaded islands.^[48] Sahul and the Pacific islands share unique biogeographic traits shaped by prolonged isolation, fostering insular gigantism in small taxa (e.g., oversized marsupials and birds) and occasional dwarfism in larger colonists, which rendered endemics particularly vulnerable to novel human pressures.^[49] In Sahul, early human populations employed fire as a landscape management tool, converting diverse closed-forest habitats into open woodlands and grasslands, which disadvantaged browser-dependent megafauna like Diprotodon while favoring more adaptable grazers—yet overall biodiversity plummeted.^[23] Purely climatic explanations fail to account for the extinctions' timing and selectivity, as megafaunal losses aligned more closely with human dispersal patterns than with regional paleoclimate fluctuations during the Last Glacial Maximum.^[50] This human-mediated transformation underscores the fragility of isolated ecosystems, where even low-density populations could trigger cascading effects through hunting, fire, and introduced species.

Evidence and Chronology

Paleontological and Fossil Records

The paleontological record of Late Pleistocene extinctions relies heavily on radiocarbon dating of megafaunal bones and teeth, which provides calibrated ages typically spanning 50,000 to 10,000 years before present (BP) with uncertainties of 50–200 years at 1-sigma for well-preserved collagen samples.^[51] This method has been instrumental in establishing last appearance dates (LADs) for species like the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), with the youngest reliable date from Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean at approximately 4,000 years BP (calibrated to ~2000 BC), indicating a isolated refugium population persisting millennia after continental extinctions.^[51] Complementary stratigraphic analysis in cave deposits and asphalt seeps (tar pits) sequences faunal remains through sedimentary layers, revealing turnover patterns; for instance, at sites like San Josecito Cave in Mexico, layered strata document shifts from diverse megafaunal assemblages to modern-like faunas around 11,000–10,000 years BP.^[52] Numerous fossil localities worldwide—spanning over 100 documented sites in North America, Eurasia, and South America—preserve evidence of abrupt faunal turnovers, where megafaunal genera like mammoths, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats vanish from assemblages within centuries to millennia.^[53] At the Rancho La Brea tar pits in California, for example, over 172 radiocarbon-dated specimens from asphalt-preserved bones delineate pre-extinction assemblages dominated by herbivores such as Bison antiquus and Camelops hesternus (abundant until ~13 ka BP) and post-extinction layers featuring only smaller survivors like coyotes, marking a shift from woodland to fire-prone chaparral ecosystems by ~12.9 ka BP.^[42] These sites collectively indicate synchronous declines across taxa in temperate regions, with LADs clustering between 13,000 and 11,000 years BP in the Northern Hemisphere.^[42] Taphonomic biases significantly influence the fossil record, as larger-bodied megafauna (>44 kg) are disproportionately preserved due to their durability and visibility in depositional environments like tar pits and caves, potentially overrepresenting their ecological roles while underrepresenting smaller or more fragile species.^[54] Additionally, records from tropical regions remain incomplete, with sparse vertebrate assemblages in areas like the Indo-Pacific and northern South America owing to poor preservation in humid, acidic soils and limited excavation efforts, hindering global syntheses of extinction patterns.^[55] Recent methodological advances, particularly Bayesian chronological modeling integrated with radiocarbon data, have refined extinction timelines to precisions of ±100–200 years by accounting for stratigraphic context, calibration curve uncertainties, and sampling biases.^[42] For instance, applications to rhinoceros population dynamics have narrowed LAD confidence intervals, as demonstrated in studies from 2023–2024 that incorporate multi-proxy data for robust age-depth models.^[56] These techniques, often using summed probability distributions and structural change analyses, enable detection of rapid demographic shifts in fossil series, enhancing resolution for sites like Rancho La Brea where state transitions are dated to within decades.^[42]

Archaeological and Genetic Evidence

Archaeological evidence reveals direct interactions between humans and Late Pleistocene megafauna through sites demonstrating spatial and temporal overlap, including tools and butchery marks on bones. At Wally’s Beach in Alberta, Canada, dated to approximately 13,300 calibrated years before present (cal B.P.), excavators uncovered remains of seven butchered horses (Equus conversidens) and one camel (Camelops hesternus), with cut marks on a horse hyoid bone and a camel cervical vertebra, alongside 29 lithic artifacts such as flakes and bifaces, indicating targeted hunting events.^[57] Similarly, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, occupied from at least 16,000 to 19,000 years ago, contains Paleo-Indian strata with charcoal from hearths and faunal remains from late Pleistocene contexts, including extinct species, though anthropogenic modifications on megafauna bones are infrequent, suggesting opportunistic scavenging or minimal direct hunting.^[58] In southern South America, 18 of 20 pre-11,600 cal B.P. assemblages feature extinct megafauna like ground sloths (Mylodon darwinii) and mastodons (Notiomastodon platensis), with cut and percussion marks in 13 sites, where these taxa comprised over 80% of identifiable bones in many cases, underscoring their dominance in human diets before regional extinctions.^[59] Genetic analyses of ancient DNA (aDNA) provide insights into megafauna population dynamics and human migrations preceding extinctions. Studies of mitochondrial and nuclear genomes from multiple taxa indicate low genetic diversity and population bottlenecks in Late Pleistocene megafauna well before their final disappearances, with ancient DNA from bison, elk, and extinct species like horses showing declines starting around 20,000–15,000 years ago, consistent with environmental pressures rather than immediate human impacts.^[16] A 2025 study sequencing genomes from Late Pleistocene horse specimens across Alaska, Yukon, and Siberia revealed bidirectional migrations via the Bering land bridge as recently as 50,000–13,000 years ago, linking North American populations to Eurasian lineages and highlighting how human expansions from Asia coincided with these faunal movements, potentially influencing genetic admixture and vulnerability.^[60] Broader genomic surveys of 139 extant megafauna species document severe population declines—up to 89% in effective size over the last 50,000 years—correlating more strongly with Homo sapiens range expansions than climatic shifts alone.^[22] These lines of evidence suggest that human arrivals often predated megafauna losses by millennia, implying lagged ecological effects rather than instantaneous overkill. In North America, pre-Clovis human presence around 14,400 cal B.P. overlaps with megafauna but lacks widespread kill sites, with only 16 documented Clovis-era instances of mammoth or mastodon predation despite abundant prey populations.^[16] While human hunting contributed to some regional declines, such as in southern South America where megafauna dominated diets until 12,500 cal B.P., there is no uniform evidence of overkill across all biogeographic realms; for instance, in Australia and parts of Eurasia, extinctions lagged human colonization by 10,000–40,000 years, pointing to cumulative pressures including habitat disruption.^[59] Recent advances in metagenomic analyses of sediments have extended detection of extinct megafauna beyond traditional fossils, revealing DNA persistence post-extinction. At Hall’s Cave in Texas, sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from 20,000–8,000 cal B.P. layers identified six extinct large mammal genera, including horses (Equus spp.) and short-faced bears (Arctodus simus), with last detections around 12,700 cal B.P., aligning with Younger Dryas climate shifts and demonstrating sedaDNA's utility for reconstructing community turnover.^[61] Similarly, Pleistocene mitogenomes recovered from Siberian lake sediments dated to 30,000–20,000 years ago include woolly mammoth and rhinoceros DNA in post-fossil contexts, indicating taphonomic redistribution and enabling finer chronological resolution of local extirpations between 2020 and 2025 studies.^[62]

Causes

History of Research

The study of Late Pleistocene extinctions began in the 19th century, when naturalists such as Charles Darwin attributed the disappearance of megafauna, including ground sloths like Mylodon darwinii, to gradual climatic shifts associated with the end of the Ice Age.^[63] Darwin's observations during the 1831–1836 HMS Beagle voyage, where he collected fossils in South America, reinforced prevailing views that environmental changes, rather than catastrophic events, drove these losses, aligning with uniformitarian geology promoted by contemporaries like Charles Lyell.^[64] This climatic perspective dominated early research, framing extinctions as part of broader Quaternary transitions without significant human involvement. In the mid-20th century, the debate shifted toward anthropogenic causes with Paul S. Martin's introduction of the "New World overkill" hypothesis in 1967, which posited that human hunters arriving in the Americas around 13,000–11,000 years ago rapidly extirpated megafauna through overhunting.^[65] Martin's model, detailed in his co-edited volume Pleistocene Extinctions, emphasized the temporal coincidence between human colonization and extinction pulses, challenging purely climatic explanations and sparking interdisciplinary contention.^[66] By the 1980s, renewed focus on climate emerged through projects like COHMAP (Cooperative Holocene Mapping Project), which integrated paleoclimatic data and general circulation models to demonstrate how deglacial warming and vegetation shifts around 18,000–11,000 years ago could have fragmented habitats and stressed megafaunal populations.^[67] The 2000s marked a synthesis of human and climatic factors, with studies highlighting their synergistic effects; for instance, analyses showed that end-Pleistocene warming amplified human impacts by altering resource availability in regions like North America.^[39] This period saw balanced models, such as those in Barnosky et al. (2004), integrating archaeological, paleontological, and ecological data to argue for combined drivers rather than singular causes.^[8] The 2010s introduced alternative milestones, including the 2018 resurgence of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, which proposed that a comet airburst around 12,900 years ago triggered cooling, fires, and extinctions, though it remains controversial and largely unsupported by geochemical evidence.^[68] Into the 2020s, genomic revolutions transformed the field, with ancient DNA analyses revealing population declines in over 90% of extant megafauna species linked to Homo sapiens expansion rather than climate alone.^[22] Recent meta-analyses from 2023–2025 highlight ongoing debates, with a systematic review of 360 studies showing roughly equal attribution to human (23%), climate (23%), and mixed (20%) drivers, though some global syntheses estimate anthropogenic factors as dominant in 70–96% of cases based on spatiotemporal patterns of human arrival and faunal turnover.^[69] These syntheses, drawing on global datasets, highlight persistent debates, including disciplinary divides between paleontologists favoring fossil-based climatic inferences and ecologists emphasizing human behavioral ecology.^[70] Research coverage remains uneven, with the Americas disproportionately studied—yielding detailed chronologies for over 70% of North American genera extinctions—compared to Asia, where sparse data limit insights into moderate losses in northern Eurasia.^[69] This imbalance perpetuates uncertainties, particularly in under-explored regions like Southeast Asia, where human-megafauna interactions are less resolved.^[71] Human-related factors are widely regarded as a primary driver of Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, with evidence indicating that the arrival and expansion of Homo sapiens triggered widespread population declines among large herbivores and associated species.^[18] Direct hunting represents a key mechanism, as demonstrated by archaeological finds such as Clovis points embedded in mammoth bones, which experimental studies confirm were effective weapons capable of penetrating the thick hides of proboscideans like mammoths and mastodons.^[72] Indirect effects included habitat alteration through the strategic use of fire, which humans employed to reshape landscapes, increasing grassland extent at the expense of forests and thereby reducing forage for browser-dependent megafauna.^[50] Additionally, second-order predation occurred when human hunting depleted apex predators and large herbivores, leading to overpopulation of smaller herbivores that overgrazed vegetation and disrupted ecological guilds, exacerbating extinctions through trophic cascades.^[73] Strong correlative evidence links these extinctions to human dispersal, with genomic analyses of 139 megafaunal taxa showing population declines aligning closely with Homo sapiens' range expansion rather than climatic shifts, and no comparable megafaunal turnover occurring prior to modern human arrival in regions like Australia and the Americas.^[74] A 2023 analysis of extinction timings across multiple continents, covering 487 species in 6 biogeographic realms, found that human presence explained up to 78% of the variance in extinction severity and 68% in body size bias, underscoring anthropogenic causation over climate.^[21] This pattern holds globally, as extinctions were minimal in areas long occupied by earlier hominins like Neanderthals but intensified following Homo sapiens' migrations.^[18] Theoretical models frame human impacts in varying timescales, with the "blitzkrieg" hypothesis positing rapid overkill through efficient hunting that quickly eradicated naive megafauna populations upon human arrival, as seen in North America's terminal Pleistocene collapse.^[75] In contrast, attribute-based models emphasize gradual selectivity, where humans targeted species with vulnerable traits such as large body size, low reproductive rates, and island endemism, leading to cumulative declines over millennia.^[20] A 2025 phylogenetic analysis supports this, revealing that extinct megafauna exhibited traits making them particularly susceptible to human predation, including slow maturation and dependence on stable habitats, with human-driven filtering evident in Palaeotropics and beyond.^[20] Critiques of human-centric explanations highlight gaps in direct evidence, such as the scarcity of confirmed kill sites for many extinct taxa—only about 16 documented cases of human interaction with North American megafauna despite 37 genera lost—suggesting that hunting alone may not account for all losses.^[76] Furthermore, extinction events often coincide temporally with climatic fluctuations, raising questions about synergistic effects, though disentangling these remains challenging without more precise chronologies.^[77] Despite these limitations, the preponderance of biogeographic and trait-based data continues to favor human agency as the dominant factor.^[21]

Climate and Environmental Changes

The Late Pleistocene epoch, spanning approximately 129,000 to 11,700 years ago, was marked by significant climatic instability, including the termination of the Last Glacial Maximum around 15,000 years ago, which initiated rapid warming and deglaciation across the Northern Hemisphere.^[78] This period featured recurrent abrupt climate oscillations known as Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) events, characterized by sudden warmings of up to 16°C followed by gradual coolings, occurring roughly every 1,000–4,000 years.^[78] Interspersed were Heinrich events, episodes of extreme cooling driven by massive iceberg discharges into the North Atlantic, which disrupted ocean circulation and amplified global temperature drops. Culminating this instability was the Younger Dryas stadial, a brief but intense cold snap from about 12,900 to 11,700 years ago, reverting much of the Northern Hemisphere to near-glacial conditions amid ongoing deglaciation.^[61] These fluctuations profoundly influenced megafaunal distributions and survival, with evidence suggesting they contributed to population declines and species replacements rather than isolated extinctions.^[78] Mechanisms linking these climatic shifts to megafaunal losses included widespread habitat fragmentation, as warming phases fragmented contiguous biomes like the mammoth steppe into isolated patches of tundra, forest, and shrubland.^[79] For instance, D-O interstadials promoted rapid vegetation transitions that reduced forage availability for grazing herbivores, such as mammoths and horses, by favoring shrub expansion over grasslands.^[80] Concurrently, post-glacial sea-level rise, accelerating after 15,000 years ago and reaching up to 120 meters above modern lows, inundated coastal lowlands and isolated populations on emerging land bridges and islands, limiting gene flow and exacerbating vulnerability in species like woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island.^[81] These environmental pressures disrupted metapopulations, with statistical analyses of fossil records showing non-random alignments between turnover events and the onsets of D-O warmings.^[78] Paleoenvironmental proxies provide robust evidence of biome alterations preceding megafaunal declines; ice cores from Greenland, such as the GISP2 record, document the tempo of D-O and Heinrich oscillations, correlating with terrestrial fossil turnovers across Eurasia and North America.^[78] Pollen records from lacustrine sediments further reveal synchronous shifts, including a post-15,000-year-ago expansion of birch-dominated shrub tundra in Beringia that predated mammoth extirpations by centuries.^[80] In North America, aggregated pollen data from over 300 sites indicate a marked drop in grassland pollen and plant diversity during the Younger Dryas, aligning with local megafauna losses like those of mastodons.^[82] A 2025 study modeling vegetation dynamics highlights how these biome changes, intertwined with megafaunal declines, amplified extinction risks for co-dependent plant species under warming scenarios.^[83] While climatic forcings alone appear insufficient to explain the full scope of Late Pleistocene extinctions—evidenced by megafauna persistence through earlier human-free glacial cycles—these changes likely amplified vulnerabilities in taxa already stressed by human expansion, particularly in regions like Eurasia where turnover clustered around 14,000–11,000 years ago.^[78]

Alternative Hypotheses

One alternative hypothesis for the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions posits the role of a "hyperdisease," a highly virulent pathogen introduced by immigrating humans or their domesticates that selectively targeted large-bodied mammals, leading to widespread die-offs around 12,900 years ago.^[84] This idea, originally proposed by MacPhee and Marx, suggests the disease spilled over from human vectors, exploiting the naïveté of isolated megafaunal populations to cause rapid declines without requiring direct human hunting.^[84] However, empirical tests using modern analogs like the West Nile virus in North American birds have found no matching size-biased extinction patterns, as the virus affects hosts uniformly across body sizes within taxonomic orders.^[84] Furthermore, ancient DNA analyses reveal no signatures of pandemics or pathogen-driven bottlenecks in megafaunal genomes, undermining the hypothesis's viability.^[69] The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis proposes that an extraterrestrial event, such as a comet airburst or fragmented impactor around 12,900 years ago, triggered the cooling onset, widespread wildfires, and megafaunal extinctions through shockwaves, ejecta, and environmental disruption.^[85] Proponents cite markers like nanodiamonds, microspherules, and elevated platinum at Younger Dryas boundary sites across the Americas as evidence of cosmic input.^[85] Yet, the absence of any impact crater—despite extensive searches, including the debunked Hiawatha Glacier structure dated to 58 million years ago—poses a major challenge, as no geological feature aligns with the proposed event.^[85] Recent critiques from 2018 to 2025, including Holliday et al., highlight inconsistent radiocarbon dating, non-unique markers (nanodiamonds form naturally), and methodological flaws, leading to its widespread dismissal as pseudoscientific.^[85]^[69] Other fringe explanations invoke geomagnetic weakening or cosmic events to explain heightened radiation exposure and mutations contributing to megafaunal vulnerability. The Laschamp excursion around 42,000 years ago temporarily reduced Earth's magnetic field to 6% of modern strength, allowing increased cosmic rays and solar radiation to penetrate the atmosphere, depleting ozone and elevating UV levels, which coincided with Neanderthal disappearance and some Australian megafauna losses.^[86] Similarly, a proposed super-sized solar proton event circa 12,837 years ago, evidenced by a sharp radiocarbon spike in sediment records and elevated nitrate in ice cores, could have delivered lethal radiation doses (3–6 Sv) to exposed megafauna, potentially destroying the ozone layer and igniting global fires.^[87] A 2025 study using sedimentary ancient DNA from Siberian and Alaskan lakes estimates 17–59 plant taxa went extinct in the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, with rates of 1.7–5.9 extinctions per million species years, attributing this to cascading effects from mammoth loss disrupting seed dispersal and grassland maintenance, though plants proved more resilient than mammals overall.^[83] By 2025 consensus, these alternative hypotheses garner low support due to insufficient direct evidence, such as absent pathogen traces in ancient DNA for disease or unreliable markers for cosmic scenarios, with research favoring human-climate interactions instead.^[69]

Consequences

Ecological and Biodiversity Impacts

The extinctions of Late Pleistocene megafauna triggered widespread trophic cascades that disrupted animal communities by removing key predators and herbivores, leading to imbalances in predator-prey dynamics and reduced population control of prey species. In North America, the loss of large herbivores such as mammoths and mastodons eliminated top-down pressures that had maintained low densities of herbivores through interactions with predators like dire wolves and sabertooth cats, resulting in sequential collapses of carnivore and herbivore guilds as surviving predators faced diminished prey availability. Similarly, in Sahul, the extinction of megafaunal marsupials, including large herbivores and carnivores, altered predator-prey networks, with synthetic food web models indicating that bottom-up changes amplified vulnerabilities, causing cascading declines in dependent species and simplifying trophic interactions.^[88] Biodiversity shifts were profound, with global mammal food webs losing an average of 35% of species and over 50% of community connections due to the combined effects of extinctions and range contractions, particularly affecting large-bodied taxa and reducing functional diversity across trophic levels. In North American communities, approximately 71% of browsing, 89% of grazing, and 80% of mixed-feeding mammals over 1 kg went extinct, leaving vacant ecological niches that surviving species like bison partially filled by maintaining similar grazing roles, though with reduced body sizes and limited redundancy. Eurasian paleontological records, reflected in Upper Paleolithic cave art depicting now-extinct megafauna such as woolly rhinoceroses and cave lions, underscore the pre-extinction diversity of large mammal assemblages, whose absence post-Late Pleistocene led to homogenized surviving communities dominated by smaller, generalist species.^[89]^[53]^[39] Long-term consequences included an overall simplification of ecosystems, with increased abundance of small mammals filling some basal trophic roles but failing to restore the complexity of pre-extinction networks, as evidenced by persistent reductions in food web links and functional redundancy worldwide. This restructuring diminished ecosystem resilience, as lost megafaunal roles in maintaining diverse animal interactions were not adequately compensated by extant species, contributing to ongoing biodiversity vulnerabilities.^[89]

Effects on Vegetation and Ecosystems

The extinction of Late Pleistocene megafauna disrupted key ecological roles in vegetation dynamics, particularly seed dispersal and browsing pressure that maintained open landscapes. Megaherbivores such as mammoths and ground sloths dispersed seeds over long distances—often 10 times farther than modern smaller herbivores—facilitating the spread of large-fruited plants and preventing localized extinctions. The loss of these dispersers led to reduced gene flow and population viability for dependent plant species, with ancient DNA evidence from Siberian and Alaskan sediments indicating potential global extinction of 17 herbaceous plant taxa during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, coinciding with mammoth steppe decline and vegetation turnover. Similarly, browsing by megafauna suppressed woody encroachment, and its absence allowed unchecked growth of shrubs and trees in former grasslands. These disruptions triggered widespread shifts in plant communities, including the expansion of woody vegetation in regions previously dominated by open steppe or savanna. In North America and Eurasia, the collapse of the mammoth steppe around 13,500–10,000 years ago resulted in a transition to shrub tundra and boreal forests, as evidenced by pollen records showing a rise in woody taxa like Betula and Alnus following megafaunal declines. In the Neotropics, the extinction of giant ground sloths contributed to denser forest structures in Amazonian ecosystems, where reduced herbivory and seed dispersal altered wood density and leaf traits in surviving plants, promoting closed-canopy dominance over more heterogeneous landscapes. Fire regimes also transformed, with accumulation of ungrazed biomass leading to increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, as reconstructed from charcoal records in North American sites, where human activities later interacted with these natural changes to further modify fuel loads. Broader ecosystem stability was compromised, as the loss of megafauna cascadingly affected trophic interactions and habitat mosaics. The mammoth steppe's conversion to less productive tundra reduced overall vegetation productivity and nutrient cycling, locking carbon in slowly decomposing litter and simplifying community structures. On Pacific islands, the extinction of large flightless birds—key frugivores—halted long-distance seed dispersal for some ecosystems. Recent modeling of post-extinction assemblages indicates a substantial global reduction in vegetation biomass, with estimates of up to 20–30% declines in certain biomes due to altered herbivory and fire feedbacks, highlighting ongoing legacies in modern ecosystems.

Implications for Human Evolution

The decline of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene prompted significant shifts in human subsistence strategies, with early societies increasingly relying on smaller prey and plant resources as large game became scarce. In the Levant, the Natufian culture (circa 15,000–11,500 years ago) exemplifies this transition, as archaeological evidence from sites like Hayonim Cave shows a marked decrease in large ungulates such as gazelle and fallow deer, coupled with a rise in small game exploitation (e.g., tortoises and partridges) and intensified gathering of wild cereals and legumes. This adaptation was likely driven by the combined pressures of climatic fluctuations during the Younger Dryas and overhunting of remaining megafauna, including species like the giant deer (Megaloceros), leading to broader dietary diversification and the foundations of sedentism.^[90]^[91] Cultural expressions of these changes are evident in the archaeological record, where depictions of megafauna in Upper Paleolithic art reflect their central role in human societies before their disappearance. For instance, the Lascaux Cave paintings in France (circa 17,000 years ago) prominently feature woolly mammoths alongside other extinct species, suggesting that these animals held symbolic, spiritual, or practical significance in hunter-gatherer life, possibly tied to hunting rituals or environmental narratives. Following the extinctions around 12,000–10,000 years ago, cave art traditions waned in Europe, with a shift toward more localized rock art and portable artifacts, coinciding with reduced reliance on big game. Concurrently, tool innovations emerged to support diverse diets, such as microliths and grinding stones in the Natufian and Epipaleolithic periods, which facilitated processing of small animals, fish, and plant foods, enhancing foraging efficiency in resource-depleted landscapes.^[39]^[92] These extinctions exerted evolutionary pressures on human populations, with outcomes varying by region due to differing histories of human-megafauna interactions. In Africa, where Homo sapiens originated, long-term co-evolution between humans and megafauna created a balanced predator-prey dynamic, buffering African populations against severe impacts; surviving large herbivores like elephants and hippos had adapted to human presence over hundreds of thousands of years, allowing relatively stable subsistence. In contrast, humans arriving in the New World during the Late Pleistocene (circa 15,000 years ago) encountered a "Pleistocene park" of abundant, naive megafauna, enabling initial population booms through Clovis-style big-game hunting, but subsequent extinctions led to scarcity, forcing rapid adaptations like broader foraging and smaller-tool technologies.^[75] Recent genomic research from 2022–2025 underscores these links, revealing how megafauna availability influenced human expansions and demographic trajectories. A 2023 study using pairwise sequentially Markovian coalescent (PSMC) analysis on ancient DNA from 139 megafauna species demonstrated that Homo sapiens' global dispersal around 50,000–48,000 years ago correlated with sharp declines in megafauna effective population sizes (up to 89% reduction), which in turn constrained human growth in newly colonized regions by limiting high-calorie resources.^[22] Ancient DNA from South American sites indicates that post-extinction scarcity around 12,000 years ago prompted genetic bottlenecks in human groups. A 2025 study further shows that extinct megafauna dominated human subsistence in southern South America before 11,600 years ago, highlighting the role of megafauna loss in shaping early human diets and population dynamics.^[93]^[94] These findings highlight megafauna as a key driver in shaping human genetic diversity and migration patterns during the Late Pleistocene.

Relation to Other Extinctions

Links to Holocene Extinctions

The Late Pleistocene extinctions set the stage for a prolonged "extinction debt" that extended into the Holocene, where surviving populations of megafauna faced delayed collapse due to ongoing environmental and human pressures. For instance, woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) persisted on Wrangel Island until approximately 4,000 years ago, well into the mid-Holocene, representing a relic population isolated after the Pleistocene mainland extinctions.^[95] Similarly, island ecosystems saw extended losses, with many megafaunal species succumbing centuries or millennia later.^[96] Human impacts amplified this continuity, as the expansion of agriculture and pastoralism in the Holocene exerted sustained pressure on remaining megafauna through habitat conversion and increased hunting. In regions like China, farming intensification over the last 2,000 years drove significant range contractions in surviving large herbivores, filtering out species already diminished by Pleistocene events.^[97] This cultural filtering contributed to collateral biodiversity losses, with up to 51% of small mammal diversity declines in some regions attributable to the ecological disruptions from earlier megafaunal extinctions.^[98] Recent analyses indicate that while overall extinction rates have slowed since the early 20th century—peaking around 100 years ago and declining across plants, arthropods, and vertebrates—human drivers like habitat destruction remain dominant threats.^[99] For example, over 240 mammal species from numerous genera have gone extinct during the Holocene, with the vast majority occurring on islands due to invasive species and land-use changes.^[100] In contrast to the Late Pleistocene's focus on megafauna, Holocene extinctions have been more widespread across body sizes and taxa, driven by broad-scale habitat alteration rather than selective pressure on large species alone.^[39]

Comparisons with Earlier Quaternary Events

The Mid-Pleistocene, spanning approximately 780,000 to 129,000 years ago, witnessed moderate megafauna losses primarily attributed to repeated glacial-interglacial cycles that altered habitats and vegetation without the influence of modern human populations. These cycles, numbering about 11 major events over the past 800,000 years, led to staggered regional declines rather than widespread pulses, with many genera persisting through multiple transitions.^[16] Additionally, dispersals of early hominins such as Homo erectus around 1.8 million years ago contributed to minor localized extinction pulses, particularly in Africa, where moderate losses of proboscideans and saber-toothed cats occurred due to increased predation pressure on naïve faunas, though these impacts were far less extensive than later events.^[39] In contrast, the Late Pleistocene extinctions were markedly more synchronous on regional scales and severe, affecting approximately 65% of global megafaunal species (>44 kg body mass), with rates reaching 72% in North America and up to 83% in South America.^[18] This event's timing aligned closely with the expansion of Homo sapiens, which exerted a dominant influence through overhunting and habitat modification, unlike the predominantly climate-driven processes of earlier Quaternary periods where human ancestors played negligible roles.^[18] The asynchrony across continents—such as rapid losses in Australia 60,000–40,000 years ago following human arrival, versus 20,000–15,000 years ago in the Americas—further underscores human biogeography as the key synchronizing factor, rather than uniform climatic shifts.^[101] Despite these differences, similarities in extinction patterns highlight consistent vulnerabilities among megafauna, including large body size (>1,000 kg for megaherbivores), slow reproductive rates, and specialization in specific habitats, which rendered species susceptible across Quaternary events.^[39] For instance, a 2025 phylogenetic analysis revealed that earlier hominin-driven extinctions in the Palaeotropics pre-filtered vulnerable species with these traits, leaving surviving lineages better adapted but still prone to the intensified pressures of the Late Pleistocene.^[20] These shared traits explain why habitat specialists and large-bodied taxa consistently faced elevated risks, regardless of the dominant driver. Overall, the Late Pleistocene event can be viewed as the culminating "final blow" to megafauna assemblages already stressed by cumulative Quaternary pressures, including successive glacial cycles and sporadic early hominin impacts, which progressively eroded diversity and resilience over millions of years.^[101] This perspective integrates the non-selective, climate-mediated losses of earlier periods with the targeted, human-amplified severity of the late event, providing context for its unprecedented ecological consequences.^[39]

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https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2316419121
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Late Pleistocene horse and camel hunting at the southern ... - PNAS
Mar 23, 2015 · Multiple cutmarks made by stone tools occur on the hyoid bone of Horse B and on a cervical vertebra of the camel. The ribs of the camel display ...<|separator|>
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How Do We Know People Used the Meadowcroft Rockshelter ...
Aug 25, 2019 · The earliest dates associated with indisputable evidence of a human presence came from samples of charcoal from firepits. This showed ...
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Extinct megafauna dominated human subsistence in southern South ...
Oct 1, 2025 · The late Pleistocene extinction of terrestrial megafauna (mammals with a body mass of more than 44 kg) is one of the most spectacular changes in ...
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Sustainability insights from Late Pleistocene climate change and ...
May 15, 2025 · We find that Late Pleistocene horses from Alaska and northern Yukon are related to populations from Eurasia and crossed the Bering land bridge ...
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Rapid range shifts and megafaunal extinctions associated with late ...
Jun 2, 2020 · Using aDNA, we detected 36 of the 56 mammal genera that Toomey reported at Hall's Cave, plus seven mammal genera not previously identified (see ...
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Mitochondrial genomes of Pleistocene megafauna retrieved from ...
Mar 15, 2024 · Abundant mitochondrial DNA of long-extinct large mammals in recent sediment of Siberian lakes suggests complex taphonomic redistribution.
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The demise of Darwin's ancient giant sloth has lessons for the present
Aug 23, 2024 · During his voyage, Darwin uncovered the remains of four species of giant sloths, three of which were new to science, and such discoveries would ...
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Resolving the phylogenetic position of Darwin's extinct ground sloth ...
May 16, 2018 · Mylodon darwinii is the extinct giant ground sloth named after Charles Darwin, who first collected its remains in South America.
[65]
The overkill model and its impact on environmental research - PMC
Sep 5, 2018 · In the 1960s, Paul Martin (1958, 1967a), a geoscientist and paleobiologist, developed the overkill hypothesis, in which human hunting was ...
[66]
Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution on JSTOR
In both sections seventeen authors display their models and techniques, looking at Pleistocene extinctions from various angles. ... Late Pleistocene Megafaunal ...
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[PDF] Climatic Changes of the Last 18,000 Years:
COHMAP (Cooperative Holocene Mapping Project) has assembled a global array of well-dated paleoclimatic data and used general-circulation models to identify ...
[68]
Sedimentary record from Patagonia, southern Chile supports cosmic ...
Mar 13, 2019 · The Younger Dryas (YD) impact hypothesis posits that fragments of a large, disintegrating asteroid/comet struck North America, South America ...
[69]
The state of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate
To gain a better understanding of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate—its history, evolution, and status—we conducted a quantitative systematic ...
[70]
Assessing the causes of late Pleistocene extinctions on the continents
One of the great debates about extinction is whether humans or climatic change caused the demise of the Pleistocene megafauna. Evidence from paleontology ...
[71]
Faunal persistence and ecological flexibility in Pleistocene ... - Science
Oct 15, 2025 · Mainland Southeast Asia witnessed a series of faunal extinctions over the course of the Pleistocene epoch, including, among the latest recorded ...
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New research shows Ice Age hunters likely used Clovis points ...
Oct 17, 2022 · Our results confirm that Clovis points were indeed effective weapons used to hunt mammoth, mastodon and gomphotheres in Ice Age North America.
[73]
Late Pleistocene extinctions through second-order predation
Whitney-Smith (2004) considers the implications of second-order predation in late Pleistocene mammal extinctions in North America. Dirzo et al. (2104) suggest ...
[74]
Worldwide Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene population ... - NIH
Nov 24, 2023 · The authors use genomic data to infer population histories of 139 extant megafauna, suggesting that their population decline is better explained by Homo ...Missing: 2024 2025 staggered
[75]
Explaining the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions: Models ... - NIH
Recent computer modeling has been used to “prove” that megafaunal extinction was due solely to over-hunting by humans (16, 17). However, in both these models ...Missing: progressive wave
[76]
[PDF] Pleistocene Overkill and North American Mammalian Extinctions
Oct 22, 2015 · In the absence of compelling testimony blaming humans for the loss of all 37 mammal genera, it has become increasingly common to argue that ...
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A review of some attacks on the overkill hypothesis, with special ...
... lack of megafaunal killsites ... O'Connell et al. Patterns in the distribution, site structure and assemblage composition of Hadza kill-butchering sites ...
[78]
Science | AAAS
**Summary:**
[79]
The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna ...
Sep 14, 2021 · Here, we provide the first long-term evaluation of the role of habitat fragmentation in species extinction, focusing on 22 large mammal species ...
[80]
Biophysical feedbacks between the Pleistocene megafauna ...
Aug 7, 2010 · In Eurasia, many cold-adapted species, including mammoths, went extinct between 14,000 and 10,000 YBP [Barnosky et al., 2004], during a ...
[81]
[PDF] Investigating the impacts of Late Pleistocene climate change on ...
Ancient. DNA has indicated that there was higher genetic diversity and population structure in Late. Pleistocene lemmings, muskox, wolves, and arctic foxes ...<|separator|>
[82]
North American pollen records provide evidence for macroscale ...
Oct 16, 2023 · We use hundreds of pollen records from lacustrine sediment cores across North America to track biodiversity and community changes since the end Pleistocene to ...
[83]
Potential plant extinctions with the loss of the Pleistocene mammoth ...
Jan 14, 2025 · During the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, the dominant mammoth steppe ecosystem across northern Eurasia vanished, in parallel with ...
[84]
Was a 'hyperdisease' responsible for the late Pleistocene ...
Aug 4, 2004 · The disease hypothesis attributes the extinction to the arrival of a novel 'hyperdisease' brought by immigrating aboriginal humans.
[85]
The Younger Dryas Impact: A Failed Hypothesis | Skeptical Inquirer
The YDIH Is a Failed Hypothesis. There are many reasons for rejecting the YDIH. Proponents assume that the YD was unique, thus invoking a rare cosmic impact.
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Earth's magnetic field flipping linked to extinctions 42,000 years ago
Feb 18, 2021 · The weakened magnetic field allowed more ionising radiation from solar flares and cosmic rays from space to reach Earth. “These damage the ozone ...Missing: mutations | Show results with:mutations
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[PDF] 303 EVIDENCE FOR A SOLAR FLARE CAUSE OF THE ...
The Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction ended abruptly about 12,900 yr ago. One distinctive feature is its terminal nature wherein extinct species were not ...<|separator|>
[88]
Sahul's megafauna were vulnerable to plant‐community changes ...
Dec 13, 2021 · Megafauna (animals > 44 kg) extinctions swept across several continents during the Late Pleistocene (126 000–12 000 years ago), with the highest ...
[89]
Collapse of terrestrial mammal food webs since the Late Pleistocene
Aug 25, 2022 · At the global scale, we estimate that late-Quaternary defaunation has resulted in mammal food webs on average consisting of 35% fewer species ...Missing: drop | Show results with:drop
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Zooarchaeological Measures of Hunting Pressure and Occupation ...
Comparisons of Early and Late Natufian assemblages provide an ideal opportunity to monitor the effects of climatic change on Late Pleistocene human adaptations ...
[91]
Faunal turnover in the Azraq Basin, eastern Jordan 28,000 to 9000 ...
Stutz and colleagues showed a steady decline in large game from the early Epipalaeolithic to the late Natufian, accompanied by an increase in small game in ...
[92]
The Cave Art Paintings of the Lascaux Cave - Bradshaw Foundation
Lascaux is famous for its Palaeolithic cave paintings, found in a complex of caves in the Dordogne region of southwestern France.Missing: extinction | Show results with:extinction
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Population reconstructions for humans and megafauna suggest ...
Dec 21, 2018 · Toward the end of the Pleistocene, North America lost 37 mammalian genera including over 70% of its megafauna, commonly defined as terrestrial ...
[94]
Thriving or surviving? The isotopic record of the Wrangel Island ...
Oct 15, 2019 · Radiocarbon dating on a molar retrieved from the island currently places the last recorded occurrence of the species at ∼4 ka (Ua-13366: 3685 ± ...4. Discussion · 4.1. Wrangel Island δc And... · 4.3. Wrangel Island Mammoths...
[95]
The dodo bird: The real facts about this icon of extinction
But within less than a hundred years the dodo would be extinct, with the last reliable sighting of it occurring in 1662 or possibly as late as 1680. A dodo ...
[96]
Long-term effects of cultural filtering on megafauna species ...
Dec 23, 2019 · We show that megafauna range contractions across China in the last 2 millennia have been dominated by the spread of farming and agricultural intensification.
[97]
Collateral mammal diversity loss associated with late Quaternary ...
Depending on the province, large mammal diversity is 27% to 52% (average 39%) lower than one would expect based on the pre-Holocene PSARs (Table 3).
[98]
https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/10.1144/SP358.12
[99]
The ghosts of mammals past: biological and geographical patterns ...
This provided a total of 241 mammal species which went extinct after the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (see the electronic supplementary material, table S1, ...
[100]
The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes ...
Northern Eurasia and North Africa also lost substantial numbers of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene and through the Holocene, for example, multiple species ...