Anthropogenic and Non-Anthropogenic Contributions to End-Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions in the American West

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dc.contributor.advisorDavis, Edward
dc.contributor.authorFinkelman, Leonard
dc.date.accessioned2019-09-18T19:23:48Z
dc.date.available2019-09-18T19:23:48Z
dc.date.issued2019-09-18
dc.description.abstractWidespread extinctions of mammalian megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene epoch remain insufficiently explained. In North America, approximately sixty megafaunal species disappeared in a window between 13 and 11 ka that is coincident both with large-scale climate changes and with human arrival on the continent. Analytical methods may distinguish these factors’ relative contributions to megafaunal extinctions. Here I give one such analysis for megafaunal taxa from the American west. I compiled a comprehensive chronology of fossil occurrences for eight taxa and used the Gaussian-resampled, inverse-weighted method to infer their likely true extinction dates; these inferences were then compared with human occupation, temperature, and palynological data from sites west of the North American continental divide. Results suggest that human activity, climate shifts, and vegetation change made distinct contributions to megafaunal extinctions. Ecological state shifts offer a unified account of the causal contributions of all three factors.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1794/24893
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Oregon
dc.rightsAll Rights Reserved.
dc.subjectClimate changeen_US
dc.subjectExtinctionen_US
dc.subjectMammal paleontologyen_US
dc.subjectMegafaunal extinctionsen_US
dc.subjectPleistocene extinctionsen_US
dc.titleAnthropogenic and Non-Anthropogenic Contributions to End-Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions in the American West
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
thesis.degree.disciplineDepartment of Geological Sciences
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Oregon
thesis.degree.levelmasters
thesis.degree.nameM.S.

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