Pleistocene-Holocene Climate Catastrophes and the Story of the Human Race.

References and Resources #1

BOOKS: RECOMMENDED READINGS

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Richard D. Altick, Victorian People and Ideas. J.M. Dent & Sons 1973.
ISBN 0 460 04190 8
Walter Alvarez, T.rex and the Crater of Doom. Princeton University Press 1997. ISBN 0 691 01630 5
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Mike Baille, Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters With Comets. B.T. Batsford 1999. ISBN 0 7134 8352 0
Michael J. Benton, When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction Of All Time. Thames & Hudson 2008. ISBN 978 0 500 28573 2
Mark Bowen, Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains. Owl Books 2005. ISBN 13:978 0 8050 8135 0
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Charles J. Cazeau & Stuart D. Scott Jr., Exploring the Unknown: Great Mysteries Reexamined. Plenum Press 1979.
Graham Clarke, The Stone Age Hunters. Thames & Hudson 1971. ISBN 0 500 29008 3
Ross Couper-Johnston, El Niño: The Weather Phenomenon that Changed the World. Hodder & Stoughton 2000. ISBN 0 340 72838 8
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Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Ninõ and the Making of the Third World. Verso 2001.
Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak. Hill & Wang 2005.
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M.I. Finley ed., The Greek Historians. Penguin books 1985. ISBN 0 14015.065 X
Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and its People, Josephine Flood. Collins Australia 1983. ISBN 0 7322 2544 2
Rock Art of the Dreamtime: Images of Ancient Australia, Josephine Flood. Angus & Robertson 1997. ISBN 0 207 18908 0
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H. A. Guerber, Greece and Rome (Myths and Legends Series). Bracken Books 1992. ISBN 0 946495 86 6
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Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods: The Quest Continues. Century Books 2001. ISBN 0 7126 7906 5
James J. Hester, Introduction to Archaeology. Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1976. ISBN 0 03 080179 6
Simon Holdaway & Nicola Stern, A Record in Stone: The Study of Australia's Flaked Stone Artefacts. Museum Victoria 2007. ISBN 0 85575 460 5
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Chris Johnson, Australia's Mammal Extinctions: A 50,000 Year History. Cambridge University Press 2006. ISBN 13 978 0 521 68660 0
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James Kohen, Aboriginal Environmental Impacts. UNSW Press 1995 ISBN 0 86840 301 6. PP 45-48 Megafauna extinction. Pg 48: 6500yo diprotodon from Liverpool Plains, NSW. Ref: Wright 1986.
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Eugene Linden, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather and the Destruction of Civilisations. Simon & Schuster 2006.
David Lindenmayer, On Borrowed Time: Australia's Environmental Crisis and What We Must Do About It. Penguin Books in association with CSIRO Publishing 2007. ISBN 978 0 14 300696 1
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Paul S. Martin, Richard G. Klein, eds., Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution. University of Arizona Press 3rd. Ed. 1995. ISBN 0 8165 1100 4
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is. Basic Books 2001. ISBN 0 465 04425 5
Mike Morwood & Penny van Oosterzee, The Discovery of the Hobbit: The Scientific Breakthrough that Changed the Face of Human History. Random House Australia 2007. ISBN 978 1 74166 702 8
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Mark Ridley ed., Evolution. Oxford University Press 1997. ISBN 0 19 289287 8.
Manuel Robbins, The Collapse of the Bronze age: The Story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt and the Peoples of the Sea. Authors Choice Press 2001. ISBN 0 595 13664 8
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N.K. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh: an English Version with an Introduction.
Penguin Books 1972, ISBN - (Not given?)
Pat Shipman, The Man Who found the Missing Link: The Extraordinary Life of Eugene Dubois. Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2001. ISBN 0 297 84290 0
James Shreeve, The Neandertal Enigma: Solving the Mystery of Human Origins. Avon Books, printed as Bard Books 1998. ISBN 0 380 72881 8
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The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution, Ian Tattersall. Oxford University Press 1995. ISBN 0 19 506101 2
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P. Vickers-Rich, J.M. Monaghan, R.F. Baird & T.H. Rich. With assistance of E.M. Thompson & C. Williams, Vertebrate Palaeontology of Australasia. Pioneer Design Studio 1991. ISBN 0 909674 36 1
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REFERENCES

Bickler, SH, and Ivuyo, B 2002, Megaliths of Muyuw (Woodlark Island), Milne Bay Province, PNG. Archaeol. Oceania 37:22-36. Megalith period 1500BP-600BP. ( ie 500AD to 1400AD) Ended @ 600BP. Little Ice Age, social collapse in South Pacific? Only some megaliths used for burials => most used for some other (astronomical?) purposes? Widespread in SW Pacific. Britannica On Line: http://www.britannica.com/ Search Term: Indus Civilisation. Viewed 06.06.2009
Brown, OJF 2006, Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) extinction on the Australian mainland in the mid-Holocene: Multicausality and the onset of ENSO. Alcheringa Special Issue 1, xxx-yyy. ISBN 0 9757894 5
Flood, J 1997, Rock Art of the Dreamtime: Images of Ancient Australia. Angus & Robertson. ISBN 0 207 18908 0
Gould, RA, O'Connor, S and Veth, P 2002. Bones of contention: Reply to Walshe. Archaeol. Oceania 37:96-101. Extreme reduction of bone at arid Zone sites is due to human extraction of marrow, not scavenging by Tassie Devils as claimed by Walshe. Tassie Devils not present in the arid inland. If confined to the coast, competition with humans amy have caused their extinction? => Hunter gatherers survived by scavenging during extreme droughts in Sahul? Which would put them at the same risk of extinction as Tassie Devils.
Heyerdahl,T 1952, American Indians in the Pacific: the Theory behind the Kon-Tiki Expediton. Allen & Unwin.
Johnson, C 2006, Australia's Mammal Extinctions: a 50,000 year history. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 10 0 521 68660 1. Mainland Thylacine extinction predates arrival of dingo: pp 155-157.
Kohen, J 1995. Aboriginal Environmental Impacts. UNSW Press. ISBN 0 86840 301 6. Megafauna extinction: pp 45-48. 6500yo Diprotodon from Liverpool Plains, NSW: pg 48. Ref: Wright 1986.
O’Connell, JF and Allen, J 2004, Dating the colonization of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea): a review of recent research. Journal of Archaeological Science 31: 835–853. We conclude that while the continent was probably occupied by 42–45,000 BP, earlier arrival dates are not well-supported. This observation undercuts claims for modern human migrations out of Africa and beyond the Levant before 50,000 BP. It also has critical but not yet conclusive implications for arguments about a human role in the extinction of Sahul megafauna.
NOAA Palaeoclimatology Website: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html (Viewed 06.06.2009)
Politis, GG, and Messineo, PG 2007. The Campo Laborde site:New evidence for the Holocene survival of Pleistocene megafauna in theArgentine Pampas. Quaternary International (2008), doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2007.12.003
Redd, AJ and Stoneking, M 1999, Peopling of Sahul: mtDNA Variation in Aboriginal Australian and Papua New Guinean Populations. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 65:808–828. We examined genetic affinities of Aboriginal Australian and New Guinean populations by using nucleotide variation in the two hypervariable segments of the mtDNA control region (CR). A total of 318 individuals from highland Papua New Guinea (PNG), coastal PNG, and Aboriginal Australian populations were typed with a panel of 29 sequence-specific oligonucleotide (SSO) probes. The SSO-probe panel included five new probes that were used to type an additional 1,037 individuals from several Asian populations. The SSO-type data guided the selection of 78 individuals from Australia and east Indonesia for CR sequencing. A gene tree of these CR sequences, combined with published sequences from worldwide populations, contains two previously identified highland PNG clusters that do not include any Aboriginal Australians; the highland PNG clusters have coalescent time estimates of approximately 80,000 and 122,000 years ago, suggesting ancient isolation and genetic drift. SSO-type data indicate that 84% of the sample of PNG highlander mtDNA belong to these two clusters. In contrast, the Aboriginal Australian sequences are intermingled throughout the tree and cluster with sequences from multiple populations. Phylogenetic and multidimensional-scaling analyses of CR sequences and SSO types split PNG highland and Aboriginal Australian populations and link Aboriginal Australian populations with populations from the subcontinent of India. These mtDNA results do not support a close relationship between Aboriginal Australian and PNG populations but instead suggest multiple migrations in the peopling of Sahul.
Robbins, M 2001, The Collapse of the Bronze Age: The Story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt and the Peoples of the Sea. Authors Choice Press. ISBN 0 595 13664 8
Savolainen, P, Leitner, T, Wilton, AN, Matisoo-Smith,E and Lundeberg, J 2004,A detailed picture of the origin of the Australian dingo, obtained from the study of mitochondrial DNA.PNAS August 17, 2004 vol.101 no. 33 12387–12390. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0401814101 .. the earliest substantiated evidence of dingoes is from 3,500 yr ago.The estimated time for the founding of the dingo population, 5,000 yr ago, fits relatively well with the archaeological record of the region, with the oldest finds of dingo being 3,500 years old and the earliest finds of dogs on nearby islands being 3,500-year-old
Singer, SF and Avery, DT 2008, Unstoppable Global Warming: every 1500 years. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 10 0 7425 5124 5
Smith, DF 2001, Natural gain: in the grazing lands of Southern Australia. University of Washington Press. ISBN-10: 0868405639
Smith, M A, Williams AN, et al. 2008, Human-environment interactions in Australian drylands: exploratory time-series analysis of archaeological records. The Holocene v18(3): 389-401. ..radiocarbon density plots suggest a step-wise pattern of population growth and expansion, with significant thresholds at 19, 8 and 1.5 cal. kyr BP. Within this, the plots suggest a saw-tooth pattern of rapid population growth and decline on a 1--3 kyr frequency, with a marked collapse of dryland hunter-gatherer populations around 3--2.5 cal. kyr BP affecting most regions.
Ugan, A. and D. Byers (2008). "A global perspective on the spatiotemporal pattern of the Late Pleistocene human and woolly mammoth radiocarbon record." Quaternary International 191(1): 69-81. doi: DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2007.09.035 We examine the temporal and geographic distribution of a worldwide sample of human and woolly mammoth radiocarbon ages (40-11,500 radiocarbon years BP) in order to examine how fluctuations in the two taxa may be related. These include human data from Europe, Siberia, and Australia and proboscidean radiocarbon ages from Europe, Siberia, and North America. We show that the geographic ranges of dated human occupations and mammoth remains do overlap across the terminal Pleistocene of the Old World, but concentrate in different areas. While frequencies of human dates in different regions covary with each other, mammoths do not. Increases in archaeological dates also fail to coincide with declines in mammoths. Rather, fluctuations in the two taxa remain largely uncorrelated during the run-up to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ca. 18,000 radiocarbon years BP) after which both groups increase sharply until 13-12,000 BP. The decline and eventual extinction of the mammoths only occurs after this period, consistent with the premise that human impacts on now-extinct proboscidean populations occurred within the context of the sharp climatic shifts and widespread environmental reorganization of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. 1040-6182
Webb, S. (2008). "Megafauna demography and late Quaternary climatic change in Australia: A predisposition to extinction." Boreas 37(3): 329-345.
Webb, S.: Megafauna demography and late Quaternary climatic change in Australia: A predisposition to extinction. Boreas, Vol. 37, pp. 3292013345. 10.1111/j.1502-3885.2008.00026.x ISSN 0300-9483.

Arguments about the extinction of Australia's megafauna have largely rested on anthropogenic factors consequent upon the arrival of humans there, and have lacked any appreciation of the possibilities of climate/environmental changes taking place during the late Quaternary. Moreover, the status of the megafauna at the extinction and in the period leading up to it has largely been ignored. This article assesses the species that existed during the late Quaternary, their continental dispersal, the likely impact of negative climate change during that time and the effect this had on their demography and variety. These factors are discussed together with a synthesis of present data regarding Australia's mega 2004: fauna demography and which species may have reached the extinction threshold. One interpretation of the data suggests a mid2013late Quaternary process of demographic fragmentation, disjunction and fluctuation, a restricted continental distribution among a diminishing group and a limited and reducing species variety due to climate and environmental change. It is argued that increasing continental aridity during the mid2013late Quaternary was a forcing mechanism behind species distribution, changes to that distribution and population reduction through episodic but widespread drought and vegetation change. This resulted in alteration of the biogeographic status of the megafauna, with increasing stress on and reduction of the population as a whole. In particular, it changed population composition and reduced species variety and overall population size by the beginning of the last glaciation, such that at the time of human entry the population had reached a precarious stage vulnerable to any level of subsequent anthropogenic activity with the arrival of humans in Australia.
Wright, R 1986, New Light on the Extinction of the Australian Megafauna. Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales 109:1-9.
Wroe, S, Field, J, 2006, A review of the evidence for a human role in the extinction of Australian megafauna and an alternative interpretation. Quaternary Science Reviews, 25(21/22):2692-2703 Arguments that megafaunal extinctions in Australia were anthropogenically mediated have focused on establishing terminal appearance ages. This approach has been underpinned by three principle tenets: (1) if megafauna disappeared before significant climate change, but after human colonisation, then it can be inferred that extinctions were human mediated; (2) climate change within the last glacial cycle was unremarkable relative to previous cycles; and (3) all or most Pleistocene megafauna were present when people arrived on the continent. We review the evidence for human causation and note mounting evidence suggesting that the last 400-300ka in Australia has been characterised by escalating aridity and climatic variability, culminating in the breach of a hydrological threshold within the last glacial cycle. Only 21 species (35%) of megafauna whose disappearance has been attributed to human activity are known to have persisted after the Penultimate Glacial Maximum
Zeder, MA 2008, Domestication and early agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin: Origins, diffusion, and impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0801317105 URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/08/11/0801317105.abstract The initial steps toward plant and animal domestication in the Eastern Mediterranean can now be pushed back to the 12th millennium cal B.P. Evidence for herd management and crop cultivation appears at least 1,000 years earlier than the morphological changes traditionally used to document domestication. Different species seem to have been domesticated in different parts of the Fertile Crescent, with genetic analyses detecting multiple domestic lineages for each species.

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2. Lister, A. M. The impact of Quaternary Ice Ages on mammalian evolution. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 359, 221–241 (2004).
3. Prideaux, G. J. in Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science (ed. Elias, S.) 1518–1537 (Elsevier, Oxford, 2006).
4. Beard, J. S. Vegetation Survey of Western Australia: Nullarbor. 1:1,000,000 Vegetation Series. Explanatory Notes to Sheet 4 (University of Western Australia, Perth, 1975).
5. Lowry, D. C. Geology of the Western Australian part of the Eucla Basin. Geol. Surv. West. Aust. Bull. 122, 1–201 (1970).
6. Lundelius, E. L.&Turnbull, W. D. The mammalian fauna of Madura Cave, Western Australia. Part VII: Macropodidae: Sthenurinae, Macropodinae, with a review of the marsupial portion of the fauna. Fieldiana Geol. NS 17, 1–71 (1989).
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12. Prideaux, G. J., Gully, G. A., Ayliffe, L. K., Bird, M. I. & Roberts, R. G. Tight Entrance Cave, southwestern Australia: a late Pleistocene vertebrate deposit spanning more than 180 ka. J. Vertebr. Paleontol. 20, 62A–63A (2000).
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Quaternary Science Reviews Volume 25, Issues 19-20 , October 2006, Pages 2449-2468 Dating the Quaternary: progress in luminescence dating of sediments doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2005.11.013 How to Cite or Link Using DOI (Opens New Window) Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. Dating the Quaternary: progress in luminescence dating of sediments Olav B. Liana, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author and Richard G. Robertsb aDepartment of Geography, University College of the Fraser Valley, 33844 King Road, Abbotsford, BC, Canada V2S 7MB bGeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia Received 9 November 2005; revised 15 November 2005. Available online 3 July 2006. Abstract Luminescence dating comprises a collection of numerical-age techniques that are among the most significant chronological tools currently used in Quaternary research. This paper briefly reviews the key historical developments in luminescence dating, from its roots in thermoluminescence dating of heated minerals to the development of optical dating methods for sunlight-exposed sediments. We describe the principles and practicalities of the various techniques commonly used in luminescence dating, including multiple-aliquot, single-aliquot and single-grain procedures, and we discuss some of the latest approaches to recognising and minimising potential errors in age estimation (e.g., by means of component analysis and dose distribution methods in optical dating). The overview also introduces the other papers in this special issue of Quaternary Science Reviews, which address a selection of important issues in basic research, technique development and application of luminescence dating to critical questions in the geological and archaeological sciences, illustrated with examples from around the world and the last million years of Earth history
Quaternary Science Reviews Volume 25, Issues 17-18 , September 2006, Pages 2251-2257 doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2006.03.013 How to Cite or Link Using DOI (Opens New Window) Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved. Does d13Ccarb of the Chinese loess indicate past C3/C4 abundance? A review of research on stable carbon isotopes of the Chinese loess Zhiguo Raoa, b, c, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, Zhaoyu Zhua, Fahu Chenb and Jiawu Zhangb aKey Laboratory of Marginal Sea Geology, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China bSino-German Center for Arid Environment and Paleoclimate Research, Key Laboratory of Western China's Environment Systems, Ministry of Education, College of Resources and Environment, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China cGraduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China Received 24 September 2005; accepted 30 March 2006. Available online 30 June 2006. Abstract Current research on stable carbon isotopes of the Chinese loess is reviewed. The stable carbon isotopic composition of soil organic matter (SOM) (d13Corg) of paleosols formed during interglacials is more positive than that within loess accumulated during glacials. Spatially, it becomes progressively more negative from the eastern Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) to the western. However, stable carbon isotopic composition of pedogenic carbonates (d13Ccarb) from the same sequence produces an opposing trend, both temporally and spatially, and variation differs from expectations under conditions of equilibrium. This indicates that d13Ccarb in the Chinese loess cannot be used to reconstruct the relative proportion of C3/C4 plants in past ecological communities. Furthermore, use of d13Ccarb to reconstruct the expansion of C4 plants in older Tertiary red clay deposits is considered unreliable. We believe d13Ccarb may act as an indirect indicator of vegetation density, following on changes in moisture supply controlled by the intensity of the Asian Summer Monsoon, but conclude that full understanding of the paleoclimatic significance of d13Ccarb in the Chinese loess and underlying Tertiary red clay requires better understanding of modern isotopic processes.
NOTE: LGM revised to 26ka from 18-19ka. Correlates with MF rock art dates from Chambers/Red gorge? See Flood. Quaternary Science Reviews Volume 25, Issues 23-24 , December 2006, Pages 3322-3337 Critical Quaternary Stratigraphy doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2006.04.010 How to Cite or Link Using DOI (Opens New Window) Copyright © 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Global glacial ice volume and Last Glacial Maximum duration from an extended Barbados sea level record W.R. Peltiera, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author and R.G. Fairbanksb, E-mail The Corresponding Author aDepartment of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5S-1A bLamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Department of Earth and Environmental Science Columbia University Palisades, NY 10964, USA Received 11 November 2005; accepted 25 April 2006. Available online 7 August 2006. Abstract Fundamental characteristics of the climate system during the most recent precessional cycle of the Earth's orbit around the Sun consist of the final expansion of land ice to its maximum extent, the subsequent episode of deglaciation, and the variations of global sea level that accompanied these events. In order to address the important issue of the variation of continental ice volume and related changes in global sea level through the late glacial period, we employ an extended set of observations of the pre-glacial and postglacial history of sea-level rise at the island of Barbados, together with a refined model of continental deglaciation and an accurate methodology for the prediction of postglacial sea-level change. Although our results provide unambiguous evidence that the post LGM rise of eustatic sea-level was very close to the widely supported estimate of 120 m, the data also provide evidence that LGM must have occurred 26,000 years ago, approximately 5000 yr earlier than the usually assumed age.
Multiregional Evolution: the Fossil Alternative to Eden. In: The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans, edited by P. Mellars and C.B. Stringer. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. pp. 62-108.
Wolpoff, M.H., A.G. Thorne, J. Jelínek, and Zhang Yinyun 1994 The Case for Sinking Homo Erectus. 100 Years of Pithecanthropus is Enough! Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 171:341-361.
Hawks, J., S-H. Lee, K. Hunley, and M.H. Wolpoff 2000 Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution. Molecular Biology and Evolution 17(1):2-22.
Wolpoff, M.H., J.D. Hawks, D.W. Frayer, and K. Hunley 2001 Modern Human Ancestry at the Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory. Science 291:293-297.
Multiregional Evolution: the Fossil Alternative to Eden. In: The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans, edited by P. Mellars and C.B. Stringer. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. pp. 62-108.
Wolpoff, M.H., A.G. Thorne, J. Jelínek, and Zhang Yinyun 1994 The Case for Sinking Homo Erectus. 100 Years of Pithecanthropus is Enough! Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 171:341-361.
Hawks, J., S-H. Lee, K. Hunley, and M.H. Wolpoff 2000 Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution. Molecular Biology and Evolution 17(1):2-22.
Wolpoff, M.H., J.D. Hawks, D.W. Frayer, and K. Hunley 2001 Modern Human Ancestry at the Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory. Science 291:293-297.

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