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Abrupt vegetation change after the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinction in southeastern Australia

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 627–631 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

A substantial extinction of megafauna occurred in Australia between 50 and 45 kyr ago1,2, a period that coincides with human colonization of Australia3. Large shifts in vegetation also occurred around this time, but it is unclear whether the vegetation changes were driven by the human use of fire4—and thus contributed to the extinction event—or were a consequence of the loss of megafaunal grazers5,6. Here we reconstruct past vegetation changes in southeastern Australia using the stable carbon isotopic composition of higher plant wax n-alkanes and levels of biomass burning from the accumulation rates of the biomarker levoglucosan from a well-dated sediment core offshore from the Murray–Darling Basin. We find that from 58 to 44 kyr ago, the abundance of plants with the C4 carbon fixation pathway was generally high—between 60 and 70%. By 43 kyr ago, the abundance of C4 plants dropped to 30% and biomass burning increased. This transient shift lasted for about 3,000 years and came after the period of human arrival and directly followed megafauna extinction at 48.9–43.6 kyr ago1. We conclude that the vegetation shift was not the cause of the megafaunal extinction in this region. Instead, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that vegetation change was the consequence of the extinction of large browsers and led to the build-up of fire-prone vegetation in the Australian landscape.

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Figure 1: Map of Australia illustrating the modern distribution of C4 grass relative to C3 grass (from ref. 21) and seasonality of precipitation.
Figure 2: Geochemical records from core MD03-2607 in the Murray Canyons Group region offshore southeastern Australia.
Figure 3: Summary diagram showing key environmental changes spanning the 60–30 kyr period.

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  • 16 July 2013

    In the version of this Letter originally published online, the published online date was incorrect; it should have read 1 July 2013. This has been corrected in all versions of the Letter.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J-B. Stuut for assistance in the field and J. Ossebaar, M. Kienhuis, M. Baas, M. Verweij and W. I. C. Rijpstra for analytical assistance. Research funding was provided by a VICI grant to S.S. from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research. Core MD03-2607 was obtained with a National Oceans Office and Australian Research Council Discovery grant, both awarded to P.D.D. Y. Balut from IPEV was instrumental in obtaining the core. Several of the 14C dates were obtained via an AINSE grant (07036) awarded to P.D.D. S. Fallon provided the two additional radiocarbon analyses listed in the Supplementary Section.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Organic Biogeochemistry, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, 1790 AB Den Burg, PO Box 59, The Netherlands

    Raquel A. Lopes dos Santos, Ellen C. Hopmans, Anchelique Mets, Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté & Stefan Schouten

  2. Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia

    Patrick De Deckker & John W. Magee

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Contributions

S.S. and P.D.D. designed the study. R.A.L.d.S. performed the analysis with input from E.C.H. and A.M. All authors participated in the data analysis and interpretation of the results. R.A.L.d.S. and S.S. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all authors.

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Correspondence to Stefan Schouten.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Lopes dos Santos, R., De Deckker, P., Hopmans, E. et al. Abrupt vegetation change after the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinction in southeastern Australia. Nature Geosci 6, 627–631 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1856

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