Mastodons graze on black ash trees in a pleistocene swamp. A new study by UW researchers shows that the disappearance of North America’s large herbivores triggered a dramatic reshaping of the landscape. Illustration by: Barry Roal Carlsen.
A study published inScience led by UW-Madison Department of Geography graduate student Jacquelyn Gill has attracted local, national, and global news coverage.
Co-authored with John W. Williams, Stephen T. Jackson, Katherine B. Lininger, and Guy S. Robinson, the study analyzes dung fungus Sporormiella to establish the megafaunal decline predated Younger Dryas cooling, enhanced fire regimes and the proposed extraterrestrial impact event.
Read the full text of the article in Science, "Pleistocene Megafaunal Collapse, Novel Plant Communities, and Enhanced Fire Regimes in North America". The study was picked up and covered by various news outlets:
- Fungus Provides Clues To North American Extinctions via NPR
- New Data Shed Light on Large-Animal Extinction via the New York Times
- Dung helps reveal why mammoths died out via BBC News
- After mastodons and mammoths, a transformed landscape via UW-Madison News