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Continental Aridification And The Vanishing Of Australia's Megalakes, Timothy J. Cohen, Gerald C. Nanson, John D. Jansen, B. G. Jones, Zenobia Jacobs, P Treble, David M. Price, Jan-Hendrik May, A Smith, Linda K. Ayliffe, John C. Hellstrom

Timothy Cohen

The nature of the Australian climate at about the time of rapid megafaunal extinctions and humans arriving in Australia is poorly understood and is an important element in the contentious debate as to whether humans or climate caused the extinctions. Here we present a new paleoshoreline chronology that extends over the past 100 k.y. for Lake Mega-Frome, the coalescence of Lakes Frome, Blanche, Callabonna and Gregory, in the southern latitudes of central Australia. We show that Lake Mega-Frome was connected for the last time to adjacent Lake Eyre at 50-47 ka, forming the largest remaining interconnected system of paleolakes on …