Abstract Over the last 50,000 years, a majority of megafauna went extinct globally. Only two regions, Africa, and tropical Asia retain megafaunal communities today. Their persistence in Africa has been attributed to co-evolution with hominins, but faunal dynamics are largely understudied in South Asia. Focusing on the Indian Subcontinent and using a novel dataset compiled from the published literature, we report an extremely size biased, but low magnitude extinction during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene—approximately 30,000 years after the arrival of Homo sapiens in the region. We document four mammalian extinctions—Palaeoloxodon namadicus, Stegodon namadicus, Hexaprotodon sp., and Equus namadicus; the extirpation of ostriches (Struthio camelus); and a pseudo-extinction of Indian aurochs (Bos namadicus). The per-capita extinction rate is comparable to eastern and southern Africa, but much lower than elsewhere. Given the long history of hominins in the Indian Subcontinent, and similar extinction patterns to those seen in Africa, we provide the first independent test of the co-evolution hypothesis, and further, suggest that robust population networks and climatic refugia may have allowed for the persistence of megafauna in this region.

中文翻译：

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印度次大陆晚第四纪灭绝

摘要 在过去的 50,000 年中，大多数巨型动物在全球范围内灭绝。今天只有非洲和热带亚洲两个地区保留着巨型动物群落。它们在非洲的持续存在归因于与人类的共同进化，但在南亚，动物群动力学在很大程度上没有得到充分研究。关注印度次大陆并使用从已发表的文献中汇编的新数据集，我们报告了在智人到达该地区大约 30,000 年后，在更新世末期和全新世早期期间发生了极其大小偏差但幅度很小的灭绝。我们记录了四种哺乳动物的灭绝——Palaeoloxodon namadicus、Stegodon namadicus、Hexaprotodon sp. 和 Equus namadicus；鸵鸟（Struthio camelus）的灭绝；以及印度野牛（Bos namadicus）的假灭绝。人均灭绝率与东部和南部非洲相当，但远低于其他地方。鉴于印度次大陆人类的悠久历史，以及与非洲相似的灭绝模式，我们提供了共同进化假设的第一个独立测试，并进一步表明，强大的人口网络和气候避难所可能允许该地区巨型动物的持续存在。