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Late-Quaternary extinction of large mammals in northern Eurasia:A new look at the Siberian contribution

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Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASII,volume 47))

Abstract

Although extinction occurred throughout the Quaternary, various calculations of extinction rates agree that the end-Pleistocene extinction was among the largest by the number of species involved and probably one of the most abrupt in time (Kurtén & Anderson 1980; Martin & Klein 1984). Generally, extinction can be considered as the failure of a species to adapt to changing biotic or abiotic conditions. The transition from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene was marked by wide-scale vegetational restructuring, which broadly correlated with the dramatic changes in the spatial distribution of some mammalian species and the extinction of others. Since the last century this correlation has been used as the main argument for environmentally caused (‘climatic’) extinction hypotheses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, 33 Leninskiy Prospect, 117071, Moscow, Russia

    Andrei V. Sher

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  1. Andrei V. Sher
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Research Centre, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Durham, South Road, DH1 3LE, Durham, UK

    Brian Huntley  & Judy R. M. Allen  & 

  2. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Telegrafenberg, P.O. Box 6012 03, D-14412, Potsdam, Germany

    Wolfgang Cramer

  3. Quaternary Sciences Institute, University of Waterloo, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Alan V. Morgan

  4. Department of Systematic Botany, Lund University, Östra Vallgatan 18-20, S-223 61, Lund, Sweden

    Honor C. Prentice

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Heidelberg

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Sher, A.V. (1997). Late-Quaternary extinction of large mammals in northern Eurasia:A new look at the Siberian contribution. In: Huntley, B., Cramer, W., Morgan, A.V., Prentice, H.C., Allen, J.R.M. (eds) Past and Future Rapid Environmental Changes. NATO ASI Series, vol 47. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60599-4_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60599-4_25

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61877-5

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