Scarred bird bones reveal early settlement on Madagascar.
Scarred bird bones reveal early settlement on Madagascar.
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伤痕累累的鸟骨揭示了马达加斯加的早期定居点。
DOI：
10.1126/science.361.6407.1059
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
A. Lawler
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Lawler
马达加斯加长期以来被认为是除南极洲之外最后一个有人类定居的主要陆地。但在本周发表的一篇《科学进展》论文中，研究人员报告说，古代被屠宰的骨头表明，人们在 8500 年前就在这个郁郁葱葱的岛屿上安家落户，比人们之前认为的早了惊人的 6000 年。伦敦动物学会詹姆斯·汉斯福德领导的研究小组的这一发现也重新引发了一场有争议的争论，即人类是否对马达加斯加独特的巨型动物群的灭绝负有责任，这些巨型动物群包括大型狐猴和世界上最大的鸟类，这些动物在8800万年前该岛脱离印度次大陆后，在很大程度上是在孤立的环境下繁衍生息的。这一争议是学者们之间更广泛分歧的一部分，即人类猎人在大型哺乳动物到达新大陆时是否不可避免地会杀死它们。
Madagascar was long considered the last major landmass, besides Antarctica, settled by humans. But in a Science Advances paper published this week, researchers report ancient butchered bones showing that people made the lush island their home 8500 years ago, an astonishing 6 millennia earlier than once thought. The discovery, by a team led by James Hansford of the Zoological Society of London, also rekindles a contentious debate over whether humans are responsible for the extinction of Madagascar9s unique megafauna, including massive lemurs and the world9s largest bird, which flourished largely in isolation after the island broke away from the Indian subcontinent 88 million years ago. That controversy is part of a wider disagreement among scholars as to whether human hunters inevitably kill off large mammal species when they arrive in a new land.