Data from: Two major extinction events in the evolutionary history of turtles: one caused by an asteroid, the other by hominins
DOI10.5281/zenodo.10498578Zenodo10498578MaRDI QIDQ6687663FDOQ6687663
Dataset published at Zenodo repository.
Alexandre Antonelli, Søren Faurby, Daniele Silvestro, Anieli Guirro Pereira
Copyright license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
We live in a time of accelerated biological extinctions, which has the potential to mirror past mass extinction events. However, the rarity of mass extinctions and the restructuring of diversity they cause complicate direct comparisons between the current extinction crisis and earlier events. Among animals, turtles (Testudinata) are one of few groups that have both a rich fossil record and a sufficiently stable ecological and functional role to enable meaningful comparisons between the end Cretaceous mass extinction (~66 Ma) and the ongoing wave of extinctions. Here we analyze the fossil record of the entire turtle clade and identify two peaks in extinction rates over their evolutionary history. The first coincides with the Cretaceous-Paleogene transition (K-Pg), reflecting patterns previously reported for other taxa. The second major extinction event started in the Pliocene and continues until now. This peak is only detectable for terrestrial turtles and started much earlier in Africa and Eurasia than elsewhere. Based on the timing, geography and functional group of this mass extinction, we postulate a link to co-occurring hominins, rather than having been caused by climate change. These results lend further support to the view that negative biodiversity impacts were incurred already by our ancestors and related lineages, and demonstrate the severity of this continued impact through human activities.
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