Differential Effects of End-Pleistocene Climate Change and Early Humans on Megafaunal Spatial Distribution in the American Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The end of the Pleistocene is characterized by pronounced climate change, human arrival and dispersal, and the extinction of a variety of taxa, the majority of which were mammals. During this period, the continent experienced the loss of thirty-eight genera of mammals, over 70% of which are classified as megafauna. Historically, the cause of these extinctions has been attributed to a singular factor: either climate change or human hunting. Recently, however, studies featuring a multi-causal framework have become more popular. This research utilizes such a multi-causal framework by examining how both climatic shifts and the arrival/expansion of human populations during the terminal Pleistocene and into the early Holocene affected the spatial distributions of various megafaunal taxa in the American Southwest. The spatial distributions of the most represented megafaunal taxa (e.g., Mamuthus, Mammut, Camelops, Equus, Platygonus, Hemiauchenia, Paramylodon, Nothrotheriops) shift latitudinally through time, though specific correlations between climatic events and human presence appear to vary between each taxon.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53962