古埃及法老陵墓上的铭文和雕刻通常会有羚羊图案。一项新研究显示，在古埃及，当发生显著的气候变化时，诸如大羚羊此类的哺乳动物的数量也会发生波动。
这项发现基于十多年前动物学家Dale Osborn开展的针对古埃及哺乳动物的考古学和古生物学调查。约6000年前，38种大型哺乳动物生活在这片土地上，而如今仅剩8种。
加拿大温哥华市西蒙弗雷泽大学生态学家Justin Yeakel说：“这项数字背后隐含着有趣的故事。古代艺术证据和书面记录是一致的。”他在近日于美国明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市召开的美国生态学会年会上展示了这一研究。例如，Yeakel表示，古希腊哲学家亚里士多德在2300年前说，在希腊，尽管狮子很罕见但是存在；不久之后，狮子最后一次出现在当地的艺术记录中。
该研究小组发现，3次埃及食肉动物数量锐减都恰逢气候突变——转向更干旱的天气。干旱气候发生的时间也和人口数量发生变化的时间（约5500年前，在非洲湿润期结束之时）相对应。
Yeakel和巴西圣保罗大学生态分析员Mathias Pires发现了这种气候关联，他们调查了远古动物灭绝和食物链稳定性的关系。Yeakel说，通常情况下，食物链越短，动物的数量越稳定。
并未参与该研究的美国加州大学圣克鲁兹分校计算生态学家Carl Boettiger说：“食物链的构成是复杂的。无需具体知道谁捕获谁，他们的研究能有力地推断出食物链的稳定性。”
Yeakel及其同事认为，古埃及动物的灭绝模式不能被解释为偶然事件。某一个物种的存在或消失并不会对一个食物网产生多大影响，这和今天很多地方的情况形成了强烈反差，也许是人类过度开发而造成了剧变。（生物谷 Bioon.com）
相关英文阅读
Ancient Egyptian rock inscriptions and carvings on pharaonic tombs chronicle hartebeest and oryx — horned beasts that thrived in the region more than 6,000 years ago. Researchers have now shown that those mammal populations became unstable in concert with significant shifts in Egypt’s climate.
The finding is based on a fresh interpretation of an archaeological and palaeontological record of ancient Egyptian mammals pieced together more than a decade ago by the zoologist Dale Osborn1. Thirty-eight large-bodied mammals existed in Egypt roughly six millennia ago, compared to just eight species today.
“There are interesting stories buried in the data — at the congruence of the artistic and written record,” says Justin Yeakel, an ecologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, who presented the research this week at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For example, the philosopher Aristotle said 2,300 years ago that lions were present, though rare, in Greece; shortly thereafter, the beasts appeared in the local art record for the last time, Yeakel says.
Overlaying records of climate and species occurrences over time, his team found that three dramatic declines in Egypt’s ratio of predators to prey coincided with abrupt climate shifts to more arid conditions. The timing of these aridification events also corresponds to major shifts in human populations at the end of the African Humid Period, about 5,500 years ago; during the Akkadian collapse, about 4,140 years ago in what is now Iraq; and about 3,100 years ago, when the Ugaritic civilization collapsed in what is now Syria.
