Faunal responses to past climatic and human impacts in eastern Australia

新南威尔士州中东部的惠灵顿洞穴是澳大利亚最具历史意义的化石所在地，保存着世界上最完整的脊椎动物生命记录之一，跨越过去400万年。到目前为止，这一独特的档案作为动物群如何应对日益干旱和气候变化的信息来源，以及过去50 000年来人类活动的信息来源，一直没有得到充分利用。该项目旨在通过分析随着时间的推移多样性、饮食和群落结构的变化，阐明气候变化如何推动澳大利亚东部现代动物的进化。这也可能有助于打破130年来气候与人类之间的僵局，即是什么导致了更新世大型动物群的灭绝。

The Wellington Caves in central eastern New South Wales are Australia's most historically significant fossil locality and preserve one of the world's most complete records of vertebrate life spanning the past 4 million years. To date this unique archive has been vastly under-exploited as a source of information on how faunas respond to increased aridity and climatic variability, as well as human activities over the past 50 000 years. This project aims to elucidate how climate change drove the evolution of the modern fauna of eastern Australia by analysing changes in diversity, diet and community structure over time. It may also help break the 130-year climate-versus-humans deadlock over what drove the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions.