Spatial Response of Mammals to Late Quaternary Environmental Fluctuations
Russell W. Graham(Illinois State Museum), Ernest L. Lundelius(The University of Texas at Austin), Mary Ann Graham(Illinois State Museum), Erich K. Schroeder(Illinois State Museum), Rickard S. Toomey(Illinois State Museum), Elaine Anderson(Denver Art Museum), Anthony D. Barnosky(Montana State University), James A. Burns(Royal Alberta Museum), Charles S. Churcher(University of Toronto), Donald K. Grayson(University of Washington), R. Dale Guthrie(University of Alaska Fairbanks), C. R. Harington(Canadian Museum of Nature), George T. Jefferson(California Department of Parks and Recreation), Larry D. Martin(American Museum of Natural History), H. Gregory McDonald(Northrop Grumman (United States)), Richard E. Morlan(Canadian Museum of Nature), Holmes A. Semken(University of Iowa), S. David Webb(Florida Museum of Natural History), Lars Werdelin(Swedish Museum of Natural History), Michael C. Wilson(Simon Fraser University)
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Abstract
Analyses of fossil mammal faunas from 2945 localities in the United States demonstrate that the geographic ranges of individual species shifted at different times, in different directions, and at different rates in response to late Quaternary environmental fluctuations. The geographic pattern of faunal provinces was similar for the late Pleistocene and late Holocene, but differing environmental gradients resulted in dissimilar species composition for these biogeographic regions. Modern community patterns emerged only in the last few thousand years, and many late Pleistocene communities do not have modern analogs. Faunal heterogeneity was greater in the late Pleistocene.