{"id":562637,"date":"2025-10-22T15:30:26","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=562637"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:30:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:30:26","slug":"climate-caused-megafauna-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/climate-caused-megafauna-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate caused megafauna extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_562599\" style=\"max-width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright vertical\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-562599 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-equus-neogeus-800.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"587\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-equus-neogeus-800.jpg 800w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-equus-neogeus-800-250x183.jpg 250w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-equus-neogeus-800-700x514.jpg 700w, https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/RPF-notas-equus-neogeus-800-120x88.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">Alex Uchytel\u2009\/\u2009Wikimedia Commons<\/span>Artistic representation of <em>Equus neogeus<\/em>, an extinct South American equine species<span class=\"media-credits\">Alex Uchytel\u2009\/\u2009Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Rainfall changes may have played a decisive role in the extinction of megafauna that lived in open environments in what is now Northeast Brazil by stimulating the formation of an unfavorable environment and reducing the food supply. C\u00e9lia Machado, a biologist from the State University of Para\u00edba (UEPB), examined 292 fossil records from four groups of herbivorous mammals that adapted to live in open environments over the last 21,000 years: <em>Equus neogeus<\/em>, an equine species; and <em>Pampatherium humboldtii<\/em>, <em>Glyptodon clavipes<\/em>, and <em>Panochthus<\/em> spp., all distant relatives of the armadillo. Machado and her colleagues found that areas of open vegetation grew or shrank in response to climate changes. In contrast, the Andean and Chaco-Pampas regions (the latter of which covers southern South America, including the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul), experienced stable precipitation patterns, which preserved the environment. In these regions, there may have been other factors behind the extinction of megafauna (<em>Quaternary Research<\/em>, January).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lack of rain accelerated extinction of megafauna in Northeast Brazil","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1651],"tags":[206,209,200,266],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-562637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","tag-biodiversity","tag-biology","tag-environment","tag-zoology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562638,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562637\/revisions\/562638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562637"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=562637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}