Unravelling what (or who) killed the largest mammals in the world over the last 50,000 yrs  

Séminaire, conférence

 

vendredi 18 décembre 2015 à 11 heures
Aix-en-Provence : CEREGE

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par Frédérik Saltré

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Late Quaternary megafauna extinctions impoverished mammalian diversity worldwide. While climatic shifts likely caused some of the largest mass extinctions earlier in Earth’s history, the role of climate in Quaternary faunal collapse is still hotly debated because many of these extinctions coincided with human colonisation. Despite recent advances in both genetic and modelling approaches and increasing fossil data, assessing the relative importance of climate variations and human pressure on megafauna extinction remains a challenge. After giving a brief overview of the main hypotheses to explain megafauna extinction worldwide, I will provide new insights on continent-wide causes of these extinctions in Australia, one of the most controversial scientific context. I will finish by presenting a new modelling approach to address similar questions at more regional scale using the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) in Eurasia as an example.

 

Contact
frederik.saltre@adelaide.edu.au
@FredSaltre

Institut Méditerranéen de la Biodiversité et d’Ecologie marine et continentale (IMBE)