% pubman genre = article @article{item_2548507, title = {{High-quality fossil dates support a synchronous, Late Holocene extinction of devils and thylacines in mainland Australia}}, author = {White, Lauren C. and Saltr{\'e}, Fr{\'e}d{\'e}rik and Bradshaw, Corey J. A. and Austin, Jeremy J.}, language = {eng}, issn = {1744-9561; 1744-957X}, doi = {10.1098/rsbl.2017.0642}, year = {2018}, date = {2018-01}, abstract = {{The last large marsupial carnivores{\textemdash}the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilis harrisii) and thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus){\textemdash}went extinct on mainland Australia during the mid-Holocene. Based on the youngest fossil dates (approx. 3500 years before present, BP), these extinctions are often considered synchronous and driven by a common cause. However, many published devil dates have recently been rejected as unreliable, shifting the youngest mainland fossil age to 25 500 years BP and challenging the synchronous-extinction hypothesis. Here we provide 24 and 20 new ages for devils and thylacines, respectively, and collate existing, reliable radiocarbon dates by quality-filtering available records. We use this new dataset to estimate an extinction time for both species by applying the Gaussian-resampled, inverse-weighted McInerney (GRIWM) method. Our new data and analysis definitively support the synchronous-extinction hypothesis, estimating that the mainland devil and thylacine extinctions occurred between 3179 and 3227 years BP.}}, journal = {{Biology Letters}}, volume = {14}, number = {1}, eid = {20170642}, }