Global warming: Perspectives from the Late Quaternary paleomammal record
- Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL (United States)
Global warming at the end of the Pleistocene caused significant environmental changes that directly and indirectly effected biotic communities. The biotic response to this global warming event can provide insights into the processes that might be anticipated for future climatic changes. The megafauna extinction may have been the most dramatic alteration of mammalian communities at the end of the Pleistocene. Late Quaternary warming also altered regional diversity patterns for some small mammal guilds without extinction. Reductions in body size for both small and large mammal species were also consequences of these environmental fluctuations. Geographic shifts in the distributions of individual mammal species resulted in changes in species composition of mammalian communities. The individualistic response of biota to environmental fluctuations define some boundary conditions for modeling communities. Understanding these boundary conditions is mandatory in planning for the preservation of biodiversity in the future. Finally, it is essential to determine how global warming will alter seasonal patterns because it is apparent from the paleobiological record that not all Quaternary warming events have been the same.
- OSTI ID:
- 5045579
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9303210-; CODEN: GAAPBC
- Journal Information:
- Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States), Vol. 25:3; Conference: 27. annual Geological Society of America (GSA) North-Central Section meeting, Rolla, MO (United States), 29-30 Mar 1993; ISSN 0016-7592
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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