Diet and habitat of toxodont megaherbivores (Mammalia, Notoungulata) from the late Quaternary of South and Central America     

Bruce J. MacFadden 《Quaternary Research》2005,64(2):113-124

The toxodont megaherbivores Toxodon and Mixotoxodon were endemic to South and Central America during the late Quaternary. Isotopic signatures of 47 toxodont teeth were analyzed to reconstruct diet and ancient habitat. Tooth enamel carbon isotope data from six regions of South and Central America indicate significant differences in toxodont diet and local vegetation during the late Quaternary. Toxodonts ranged ecologically from C₃ forest browsers in the Amazon (mean δ¹³C = −13.4‰), to mixed C₃ grazers and/or browsers living either in C₃ grasslands, or mixed C₃ forested and grassland habitats in Honduras (mean δ¹³C = −9.3‰), Buenos Aires province, Argentina (δ¹³C = −8.7‰), and Bahia, Brazil (mean δ¹³C = −8.6‰), to predominantly C₄ grazers in northern Argentina (δ¹³C = −4.4‰), to specialized C₄ grazers in the Chaco of Bolivia (δ¹³C = −0.1‰). Although these toxodonts had very high-crowned teeth classically interpreted for grazing, the isotopic data indicate that these megaherbivores had the evolutionary capacity to feed on a variety of dominant local vegetation. In the ancient Amazon region, carbon isotope data for the toxodonts indicate a C₃-based tropical rainforest habitat with no evidence for grasslands as would be predicted from the Neotropical forest refugia hypothesis.  相似文献   

New evidence for an extended occupation of the Provo shoreline and implications for regional climate change, Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, Utah, USA     

Holly S. Godsey  Donald R. Currey  Marjorie A. Chan 《Quaternary Research》2005,63(2):212-223

Lake Bonneville was a climatically sensitive, closed-basin lake that occupied the eastern Great Basin during the late Pleistocene. Ongoing efforts to refine the record of lake level history are important for deciphering climate conditions in the Bonneville basin and for facilitating correlations with regional and global records of climate change. Radiocarbon data from this and other studies suggest that the lake oscillated at or near the Provo level much longer than depicted by current models of lake level change. Radiocarbon data also suggest that the lake dropped from threshold control much more rapidly than previously supposed. These revisions to the Lake Bonneville hydrograph, coupled with independent evidence of climate change from vegetation and glacial records, have important implications for conditions in the Bonneville basin and during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition.  相似文献   

Climate control on stacked paleosols in the Pleistocene of the Po Basin (northern Italy)     

Luigi Bruno  Michela Marchi  Ilaria Bertolini  Guido Gottardi  Alessandro Amorosi 《第四纪科学杂志》2020,35(4):559-571

Paleosols are recurrent features in alluvial successions and provide information about past sedimentary dynamics and climate change. Through sedimentological analysis on six sediment cores, the mud-dominated succession beneath the medieval ‘Two Towers’ of Bologna was investigated down to 100 m depth. A succession of weakly developed paleosols (Inceptisols) was identified. Four paleosols (P1, P2, P3 and PH) were radiocarbon-dated to 40–10 cal ka bp . Organic matter and CaCO₃ determinations indicate low groundwater levels during soil development, which spanned periods < 5 ka. The development and burial of soils, which occurred synchronously in the Bologna region and in other sectors of the Po Plain, are interpreted to reflect climatic and eustatic variations. Climatic oscillations, at the scale of the Bond cycles, controlled soil development and burial during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 (P1 and P2). Rapid sea-level oscillations probably induced soil development at the MIS 3/2 transition (P3) and favored burial of PH after 10 ka bp . Weakly developed paleosols in alluvial successions can provide clues to millennial-scale climatic and environmental variations. In particular, the paleosol-bearing succession of the Po Plain represents an unprecedent record of environmental changes across the Late Pleistocene (MIS 3 and 2) in the Mediterranean region.  相似文献   

Plio-Pleistocene mammals from Mille-Logya,Ethiopia, and the post-Hadar faunal change     

Denis Geraads  Denne Reed  W. Andrew Barr  René Bobe  Peter Stamos  Zeresenay Alemseged 《第四纪科学杂志》2021,36(6):1073-1089

We describe the non-primate mammalian fauna from the late Pliocene to earliest Pleistocene deposits of Mille-Logya in the Lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia, dated to c. 2.9–2.4 Ma, and divided into three successive units: Gafura, Seraitu, and Uraitele. We identify 41 mammalian taxa (including rodents), the most diverse group being the Bovidae, with 17 taxa. While the Gafura assemblage still resembles those from the earlier Hadar Formation, the younger Seraitu assemblage documents a major turnover. While there is little change in the species present across this interval, the relative abundances of various taxa change dramatically, with suids being largely replaced by open-country bovids (Alcelaphini and Antilopini). We interpret this faunal change as reflective of an environmental shift, contemporaneous with the replacement of Australopithecus afarensis by Homo in the area.  相似文献   

Impacts of groundwater flow on the evolution of a thermokarst lake in the permafrost–dominated region on the Qinghai–Tibet plateau     

Jinlong Li  Wei Wang  Xianmin Ke  Jianhua Li  Yating Yu  Zeyong Gao  Fujun Niu 《水文研究》2021,35(12):e14443

As a result of global warming induced permafrost degradation in recent decades, thermokarst lakes in the Qinghai–Tibet plateau (QTP) have been regulating local hydrological and ecological processes. Simulations with coupled moisture–heat numerical models in the Beiluhe basin (located in the hinterland of permafrost regions on the QTP) have provided insights into the interaction between groundwater flow and the freeze–thaw process. A total of 30 modified SUTRA scenarios were established to examine the effects of hydrodynamic forces, permeability, and climate on thermokarst lakes. The results indicate that the hydrodynamic condition variables regulate the permafrost degradation around the lakes. In case groundwater recharges to the lake, a low–temperature groundwater flow stimulates the expansion of the surrounding thawing regions through thermal convection. The thawing rate of the permafrost underlying the lake intensifies when groundwater is discharged from the lake. Under different permeability conditions, spatiotemporal variations in the active layer thickness significantly influence the occurrence of an open talik at the lake bottom. A warmer and wetter climate will inevitably lead to a sharp decrease in the upper limit of the surrounding permafrost, with a continual decrease in the duration of open talik events. Overall, our results underscore that comprehensive consideration of the relevant hydrologic processes is critical for improving the understanding of environmental and ecological changes in cold environments.  相似文献   

New magnetostratigraphic and pedostratigraphic investigations of loess deposits in north‐east China and their implications for regional environmental change during the Mid‐Pleistocene climatic transition          下载免费PDF全文

Lin Zeng  Huayu Lu  Shuangwen Yi  Yongxiang Li  Anqi Lv  Wenchao Zhang  Zhiwei Xu  Haifeng Wu  Han Feng  Mengchun Cui 《第四纪科学杂志》2016,31(1):20-32

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A late Early Pleistocene pollen record from Fontana Ranuccio (central Italy)     

Paolo Corrado  Donatella Magri 《第四纪科学杂志》2011,26(3):335-344

A pollen record from a sediment core drilled underneath the Acheulian site of Fontana Ranuccio provides new data on the vegetation characters in central Italy during the late Early Pleistocene, in a forest phase possibly corresponding to a substage of Marine Isotope Stage 21. A number of tree taxa nowadays extinct in Europe (Cathaya, Tsuga, Taxodium type, Carya and Pterocarya) are present at Fontana Ranuccio in a temperate phase characterised by dense forest conditions, dominated by Alnus and Pterocarya. The comparison of the Fontana Ranuccio record with other dated sites distributed along the Italian peninsula indicates that the floristic and vegetational characters of the Mid Pleistocene revolution present a rather distinct succession of biostratigraphic events. Compared to other Early Pleistocene pollen records from southern Europe, the Italian Peninsula shows greater floristic similarities with the Eastern Mediterranean regions than with the Iberian Peninsula. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

A smoothed particle hydrodynamics modelling of soil–water mixing and resulting changes in average strength     

Wangcheng Zhang  Mark F. Randolph 《国际地质力学数值与分析法杂志》2020,44(11):1548-1569

Soil–water interaction is a pivotal process in many underwater geohazards such as underwater landslides where soil sediments gradually evolve into turbidity currents after interactions with ambient water. Due to the large deformations, multiphase interactions and phase changes this involves, investigations from numerical modelling of the transition process have been limited so far. This study explores a simple numerical replication of such soil–water mixing with respect to changes in average strength using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). A uniform viscoplastic model is used for both the solid-like and fluid-like SPH particles. The proposed numerical solution scheme is verified by single-phase dam break tests and multiphase simple shear tests. SPH combinations of solid-like and fluid-like particles can replicate the clay–water mixture as long as the liquidity index of the solid-like particles is larger than unity. The proposed numerical scheme is shown to capture key features of an underwater landslide such as hydroplaning, water entrainment and wave generation and thus shows promise as a tool to simulate the whole process of subaquatic geohazards involving solid–fluid transition during mass transport.  相似文献   

Urban re-generations: afterword to special issue on the politics of urban greening in Australian cities     

Donna Houston 《The Australian geographer》2020,51(2):257-263

ABSTRACT

‘Urban re-generations' is written as an afterword to the special issue of Australian Geographer on ‘The Politics of Urban Greening in Australian Cities'. The collection prompts a deep questioning of reparative and regenerative work associated with greening, green spaces and green infrastructures. The climate-driven 2019-2020 bushfire crisis and COVID-19 have amplified the visibility of the more-than-human connectivity of our cities and the deep underlying structures of social and environmental inequity underpinning a variety of urban green spaces and agendas. Inspired by the articles in this special issue, the afterword explores how we might call back the grammars and practices of regeneration from their service to the neo-liberal, settler-colonial city and instead nurture reparative de-colonial practices that aid in the collaborative work of re-composing, becoming into better relation with, and working in modes of situated historical and cultural difference, with green and just cities.  相似文献   

Modeling nonlinear wave–wave interactions with the elliptic mild slope equation     

《Applied Ocean Research》2014

An approach is developed to simulate wave–wave interactions using nonlinear elliptic mild-slope equation in domains where wave reflection, refraction, diffraction and breaking effects must also be considered. This involves the construction of an efficient solution procedure including effective boundary treatment, modification of the nonlinear equation to resolve convergence issues, and validation of the overall approach. For solving the second-order boundary-value problem, the Alternating Direction Implicit (ADI) scheme is employed, and the use of approximate boundary conditions is supplemented, for improved accuracy, with internal wave generation method and dissipative sponge layers. The performance of the nonlinear model is investigated for a range of practical wave conditions involving reflection, diffraction and shoaling in the presence of nonlinear wave–wave interactions. In addition, the transformation of a wave spectrum due to nonlinear shoaling and breaking, and nonlinear resonance inside a rectangular harbor are simulated. Numerical calculations are compared with the results from other relevant nonlinear models and experimental data available in literature. Results show that the approach developed here performs reasonably well, and has thus improved the applicability of this class of wave transformation models.  相似文献