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Palaeontology

Extinction promoted fire

The extinction of megafauna in Australia roughly coincided with shifts in vegetation and fire regimes. Sediment geochemistry shows that the vegetation shift followed the extinction, indicating that the loss of browsers promoted fire and altered plant composition.

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Figure 1: Fire in the bush.

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Correspondence to Beverly Johnson.

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Johnson, B. Extinction promoted fire. Nature Geosci 6, 595–596 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1907

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