Paper No. 122-0
TRIGGERS, THRESHOLDS, RUSSIAN ROULETTE, AND PLEISTOCENE EXTINCTIONS
GRAHAM, Russell Wm., Chief Curator, Denver Museum of Nature and Sci, 2001 Colorado Blvd, Denver, CO 80205, rgraham@dmns.org.

The primary concerns for endangered species today are habitat loss and geographic range reduction. These are the same concerns that the Pleistocene megafauna faced about 11ka radiocarbon. However, in the Pleistocene, habitat loss and reductions in geographic range were driven by climate and environmental change; whereas, today humans are one of the primary driving forces. Continuous climate change throughout the Pleistocene selected for the evolution of new habitat mosaics and the "extinction" of old ones (eg., parklands, savannas, etc.). In addition, these environmental changes reduced the ranges of both large and small mammals but because the probability of extinction is a function of geographic range and body size, large mammals were preferentially selected for extinction. With this model, climate change at the end of the Pleistocene need not be unique but it probably served as a trigger for a threshold effect. Once populations dropped below critical levels, the megafauna was doomed, irrespective of human involvement!

GSA Annual Meeting, November 5-8, 2001
General Information for this Meeting
Session No. 122
Archaeological Geology and the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition
Hynes Convention Center: 206
8:00 AM-12:00 PM, Wednesday, November 7, 2001
 

© Copyright 2001 The Geological Society of America (GSA), all rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to the author(s) of this abstract to reproduce and distribute it freely, for noncommercial purposes. Permission is hereby granted to any individual scientist to download a single copy of this electronic file and reproduce up to 20 paper copies for noncommercial purposes advancing science and education, including classroom use, providing all reproductions include the complete content shown here, including the author information. All other forms of reproduction and/or transmittal are prohibited without written permission from GSA Copyright Permissions.