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Nature 419, 440-441 (3 October 2002) | doi:10.1038/419440a
Evolutionary biology: Death in the slow lane
Marcel Cardillo & Adrian Lister
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Abstract
Were the Late Pleistocene extinctions of large mammals the result of climate change or big-game hunting by humans? Reconstructing the biology of extinct species provides clues to the answer.
What caused the Late Pleistocene 'megafaunal' extinctions — the episode between about 50,000 and 10,000 years ago when mammoths, giant ground sloths, giant kangaroos (Fig. 1) and dozens of other large vertebrate species became extinct?
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