近日，澳大利亚北领地博物馆和艺术馆Samuel D. Arman等研究人员发现，袋鼠的饮食广度促进其对第四纪气候变化的适应力。这一研究成果发表在2025年1月10日出版的国际学术期刊《科学》上。

通过使用牙齿微磨损纹理分析，研究人员发现，澳大利亚最丰富的更新世袋鼠群体中的大多数成员，其饮食比其颅齿解剖结构所暗示的要广泛得多。

大多数袋鼠的混合性食物摄取指出，饮食广度是应对气候驱动的植被结构波动的一种关键行为适应，驳斥了晚更新世气候变化是它们灭绝的主要驱动因素的可能性。

据了解，确定是什么导致了晚更新世大陆巨型动物的灭绝仍然是历史科学中最具争议的话题之一。特别是在澳大利亚，约40,000年前，该大陆失去了90%的大型物种，其中超过一半是袋鼠。由于对其生态学的了解有限，确定灭绝原因一直受到阻碍。

附：英文原文

Title: Dietary breadth in kangaroos facilitated resilience to Quaternary climatic variations

Author: Samuel D. Arman, Grant A. Gully, Gavin J. Prideaux

Issue&Volume: 2025-01-10

Abstract: Identifying what drove the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on the continents remains one of the most contested topics in historical science. This is especially so in Australia, which lost 90% of its large species by 40,000 years ago, more than half of them kangaroos. Determining causation has been obstructed by a poor understanding of their ecology. Using dental microwear texture analysis, we show that most members of Australia’s richest Pleistocene kangaroo assemblage had diets that were much more generalized than their craniodental anatomy implies. Mixed feeding across most kangaroos pinpoints dietary breadth as a key behavioral adaptation to climate-driven fluctuations in vegetation structure, dispelling the likelihood that late Pleistocene climatic variation was a primary driver of their disappearance.

DOI: adq4340

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq4340