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历史上最重要的化石产地，保存着世界上最完整的脊椎动物生命记录之一，跨越了400万年。迄今为止，这一独特的档案尚未得到充分利用，无法作为研究过去5万年来动物如何应对日益严重的干旱和气候变化以及人类活动的信息来源。该项目旨在通过分析多样性、饮食和群落结构随时间的变化，阐明气候变化如何推动澳大利亚东部现代动物群的进化。它还可能有助于打破130年来气候与人类之间关于更新世巨型动物灭绝原因的僵局。

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.