Dong, Yajie ， Wu, Naiqin ， Li, Fengjiang ， Wei, Fukang ， Lu, Houyuan
2024-10-01 PALAEOGEOGRAPHY PALAEOCLIMATOLOGY PALAEOECOLOGY 2024 651(卷), null(期), (null页)
Land snails are sensitive to environmental changes and are valuable indicators of past changes. In this study, we analyzed 88,000 fossilized land snails from well-dated loess sequences in China spanning the past 20,000 years, and we detected two distinct phases of rapid compositional change. The first phase coincided with rapid climate changes associated with the last deglaciation ( 16.5-11 kyr BP), while the second phase ( 2.2 kyr BP) corresponded to the more gradual climate change of the late Holocene. The acceleration of snail compositional change since 2.2 kyr BP likely stems from human activities and related changes in agricultural land use. This unprecedented anthropogenic influence surpasses all other historical fluctuations over the past 20,000 years. Our findings underscore the significant role of human civilization in altering invertebrate communities, providing crucial insights into the ongoing human impact on Earth's ecosystems.