First Contact - a multidisciplinary assessment of the impact of human arrival on faunal biodiversity

In the middle of the last ice age, anatomically modern humans began an expansion that eventually would reach all corners of the world. How did the staggered arrival of humans in different regions affect resident animal populations? Did this process spark the onset of population declines that led to the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna?

How did subsequent technological developments and the appearance of domestic animals affect populations of resident wild animals, and did the latter result in hybridisation or the introduction of novel pathogens? These are fundamental questions that have been the focus of long-standing yet unresolved scientific debate.

The project proposed here will bring together expertise in archaeology, evolutionary biology, and ecology to investigate these questions.

Building on recent developments in DNA recovery, sequencing technology and chronological dating methods, we will generate multi-species palaeogenomic datasets from wild animals, humans, and ancient sediments from multiple sites across the Northern Hemisphere.

The resulting genomic transects will be coupled with archaeological and geological data, and analysed in an integrated framework to assess the impact that human arrival had on faunal biodiversity and ecosystem composition.

The proposed six-year research programme will be jointly supervised by senior researchers in archaeology, biology, and geology, and will provide multidisciplinary training for several early-career researchers.