Revisiting the late Pleistocene mammal extinction record at Tight Entrance Cave, southwestern Australia

Tight Entrance Cave (TEC) in southwestern Australia provides a Pleistocene sequence documenting the extinction of 14 large mammal species. This record has been interpreted as indicating that extinctions did not occur during or before the penultimate glacial maximum (PGM) and that humans played a primary role in the extinctions. However, it remains possible that the majority of extinct megafauna persisted no later than the PGM. The TEC extinctions correspond with vegetation change, a cooling/drying trend, increased biomass burning, and increasingly unstable small mammal communities. The initiation of these trends predates human arrival on the continent and implies environmentally mediated extinctions.