TY - JOUR
T1 - Dietary breadth in kangaroos facilitated resilience to Quaternary climatic variations
AU - Arman, Samuel D.
AU - Gully, Grant A.
AU - Prideaux, Gavin J.
PY - 2025/1/10
Y1 - 2025/1/10
N2 - Identifying what drove the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on the continents remains one of the most contested topics in historical science. This is especially so in Australia, which lost 90% of its large species by 40,000 years ago, more than half of them kangaroos. Determining causation has been obstructed by a poor understanding of their ecology. Using dental microwear texture analysis, we show that most members of Australia's richest Pleistocene kangaroo assemblage had diets that were much more generalized than their craniodental anatomy implies. Mixed feeding across most kangaroos pinpoints dietary breadth as a key behavioral adaptation to climate-driven fluctuations in vegetation structure, dispelling the likelihood that late Pleistocene climatic variation was a primary driver of their disappearance.
AB - Identifying what drove the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on the continents remains one of the most contested topics in historical science. This is especially so in Australia, which lost 90% of its large species by 40,000 years ago, more than half of them kangaroos. Determining causation has been obstructed by a poor understanding of their ecology. Using dental microwear texture analysis, we show that most members of Australia's richest Pleistocene kangaroo assemblage had diets that were much more generalized than their craniodental anatomy implies. Mixed feeding across most kangaroos pinpoints dietary breadth as a key behavioral adaptation to climate-driven fluctuations in vegetation structure, dispelling the likelihood that late Pleistocene climatic variation was a primary driver of their disappearance.
KW - Megafauna
KW - Extinction
KW - Diet
KW - Dietary breadth
KW - Behavioral adaptation
KW - Climate variability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85214896135&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/ARC/DP110100726
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/ARC/FT130101728
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/ARC/LE130100115
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/ARC/DP190103636
U2 - 10.1126/science.adq4340
DO - 10.1126/science.adq4340
M3 - Article
C2 - 39787219
AN - SCOPUS:85214896135
SN - 1095-9203
VL - 387
SP - 167
EP - 171
JO - Science (New York, N.Y.)
JF - Science (New York, N.Y.)
IS - 6730
ER -