Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon A palaeontological perspective on the proposal to reintroduce Tasmanian devils to mainland Australia to suppress invasive predators Michael C. Westaway a, ⁎ , Gilbert Price b , Tony Miscamble c , Jane McDonald b , Jonathon Cramb b , Jeremy Ringma d , Rainer Grün a , Darryl Jones a , Mark Collard e, ⁎ a Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Environmental Futures Research Institute, N13 Environment 2 Building, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Brisbane, Queensland 4111, Australia b School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia c School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia d College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 2500 Campus Road, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822, USA e Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Australia Invasive predator Fossil record Feral cat Fox Tasmanian devil Sarcophilus ABSTRACT The diversity of Australia's mammalian fauna has decreased markedly since European colonisation. Species in the small-to-medium body size range have been particularly badly affected. Feral cats and foxes have played a central role in this decline and consequently strategies for reducing their numbers are being evaluated. One such strategy is the reintroduction to the mainland of the Tasmanian devil, Sarcophilus harrisii. Here, we provide a palaeontological perspective on this proposal. We begin by collating published records of devil remains in Quaternary deposits. These data show that the range of devils once spanned all the main ecological zones in Australia. This indicates that they are capable of coping with a wide range of climatic and environmental conditions, and suggests that they could conceivably be reintroduced much more widely than has been thought possible hitherto. Subsequently, we examine fossils and coprolites from two sites in the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area. These specimens not only support the suggestion that devils have wide ecological toler- ances, but also suggest that devils can coexist with native small-to-medium species over long periods of time, which addresses one of the major concerns about the proposed reintroduction. We believe these two sets of palaeontological observations add substantial weight to the idea of reintroducing devils to the mainland as a way of suppressing cat and fox numbers. 1. Introduction Biodiversity is declining rapidly in many parts of the world (Rockstrom et al., 2009; Barnosky et al., 2012) and some of these losses are likely to have disproportionate impacts on ecosystem function (Ritchie and Johnson, 2009). Removal of top-predators, in particular, commonly leads to marked changes in the abundance of species at lower trophic level (Estes and Duggins, 1995; White et al., 1998), which in turn can have major impacts on the rest of the ecosystem (MacArthur and Wilson, 1963; Terborgh, 1988; Terborgh et al., 2001; Ritchie et al., 2012). When the loss of native top-predators coincides with the arrival of invasive predators, native prey populations can be irrevocably dis- rupted (Wallach et al., 2010). Australia is a case in point. The diversity of Australia's mammalian fauna has declined markedly since European colonisation, with at least 30 species and subspecies suffering extinction and many others ex- periencing substantial decreases in both range area and population size over the same time period (Ceballos and Ehrlich, 2002). In some re- gions of Australia, current terrestrial mammal diversity is estimated to be < 50% of that prior to the 18th century (McKenzie et al., 2007). The majority of mammal species that have been lost or experienced sizeable population declines are in the so-called ‘critical weight range’ (CWR), which is 35 g to 5500 g (Burbidge and McKenzie, 1989). Most of Aus- tralia's CWR species are adapted to arid or semi-arid environments. They include native rodents, small-bodied macropods, bandicoots, da- syurids, and potoroids. There is general agreement that most of the losses of Australian CWR species are due, at least in part, to the introduction of invasive https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.02.002 Received 5 July 2018; Received in revised form 21 December 2018; Accepted 4 February 2019 ⁎ Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: m.westaway@griffith.edu.au (M.C. Westaway), g.price1@uq.edu.au (G. Price), j.mcdonald9@uq.edu.au (J. McDonald), jonathan.cramb@qm.qld.gov.au (J. Cramb), ringmaj@hawaii.edu (J. Ringma), rainer.grun@griffith.edu.au (R. Grün), d.jones@griffith.edu.au (D. Jones), mcollard@sfu.ca (M. Collard). Biological Conservation 232 (2019) 187–193 0006-3207/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T