Fifty Thousand Years of Extinction

Adrian Lister

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001186

Abstract

Fifty Thousand Years of Extinction

Highlights

The Late Quaternary extinction of megafauna has been a ‘‘hot topic’’ of research and debate since at least the time of Darwin, but especially since the 1960s when Paul Martin ignited the debate with his theory of prehistoric overkill
Sometimes described as a ‘‘mass extinction’’, the Late Quaternary event, by itself, does not compare with the major extinctions of the distant past, such as the Late Permian event, when an estimated 90% of species went extinct, or the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) event, with 75%, both decimating multiple groups of animals and plants across the marine, terrestrial, and freshwater biomes
The Late Quaternary event, by contrast, affected only large mammals, so even with the major losses in this group, the number of species lost was less than a thousand, of the order of 0.01% of total global biodiversity

Summary

Introduction

The Late Quaternary extinction of megafauna has been a ‘‘hot topic’’ of research and debate since at least the time of Darwin (who discussed it in the Origin), but especially since the 1960s when Paul Martin ignited the debate with his theory of prehistoric overkill. The topic has had increasing exposure over the past ten years because of the relevance of this, the most recent palaeontological extinction event, to modern concerns about biodiversity loss.

Results

Conclusion