Let's Go Mammoth Hunting

[Fife]

Humans ruin everything.

[Speaker to Animals]

However, most recent and up to date research is concluding that humans did in fact have an impact in the extinction of mega fauna around the globe.
Provide some recent scientific evidence to support your theory before dismissing the possibility of human causes out of hand.

No. Nobody knows why the megafauna extinction event occurred, but it probably was *not* the fault of humans. The event was global. It occurred on all continents except Antarctica (for obvious reasons). The prevailing assumption is that it was ecological in cause since it occurred during the rapid climate change at the end of the ice age.

It also occurred in places that probably had very little if any human presence at the time (inland South America).

But where it did not make as big an impact was in Africa, which had the most humans in it, so there goes your theory..

[Montegriffo]

Humans ruin everything.

When it comes to bio-diversity that is generally true...

[C-Mag]

However, most recent and up to date research is concluding that humans did in fact have an impact in the extinction of mega fauna around the globe.
Provide some recent scientific evidence to support your theory before dismissing the possibility of human causes out of hand.

No. Nobody knows why the megafauna extinction event occurred, but it probably was *not* the fault of humans. The event was global. It occurred on all continents except Antarctica (for obvious reasons). The prevailing assumption is that it was ecological in cause since it occurred during the rapid climate change at the end of the ice age.

It also occurred in places that probably had very little if any human presence at the time (inland South America).

But where it did not make as big an impact was in Africa, which had the most humans in it, so there goes your theory..

+1

A lot of researchers have bought into the human caused Mastadon extinction in North America, but it doesn't explain all the others.
At approximately the same time, 10,000 years 3 major species that originated in the Americas disappeared. Horses, Camels and Elephants.

[Montegriffo]

However, most recent and up to date research is concluding that humans did in fact have an impact in the extinction of mega fauna around the globe.
Provide some recent scientific evidence to support your theory before dismissing the possibility of human causes out of hand.

No. Nobody knows why the megafauna extinction event occurred, but it probably was *not* the fault of humans. The event was global. It occurred on all continents except Antarctica (for obvious reasons). The prevailing assumption is that it was ecological in cause since it occurred during the rapid climate change at the end of the ice age.

It also occurred in places that probably had very little if any human presence at the time (inland South America).

But where it did not make as big an impact was in Africa, which had the most humans in it, so there goes your theory..

The extinctions happened over tens of thousands of years and did not occur rapidly coinciding with the warming up after the last ice age as you suggest. The extinctions did seem to occur alongside the migrations of humans around the globe though.
In Africa animals lived alongside humans for much longer which led to them developing a greater respect and fear of them. Megafauna in the ‘New World’ (basically not-Africa) were easier hunting targets: indigenous species in the New World did not evolve in the presence of humans so had not developed the same natural wariness exhibited by similarly large species in the Old World (Africa).

Many Clovis (an Ancient North American people – ancestors of today’s native americans) sites have been found where there are skeletons of mammoths with spear heads in them. Models developed after the theory have also found support for it. For example, Alroy (2001) independently ran simulations in a model and concluded that ‘homo sapiens growth rate and hunting ability almost always led to mass extinctions, with hunting ability being the most important of all parameters’. Big animals are particularly susceptible to extinction because gestation periods are longer and they require more resources to survive.



“The inverse relationship between body size and population size plays a powerful role in increasing the risk of extinction faced by larger animals” – Grayson

So no, the prevailing thought is that human rather than climate led to the extinction of megafauna.
Most scientists now subscribe to the theory that humans finished off large species unable to adapt quickly enough to the changing climate.

[Montegriffo]

A lot of researchers have bought into the human caused Mastadon extinction in North America, but it doesn't explain all the others.
At approximately the same time, 10,000 years 3 major species that originated in the Americas disappeared. Horses, Camels and Elephants.

Which coincides with the introduction of humans 15,000 years ago and not the end of the iceage 90 -100,000 years ago.
If climate change were the main reason for the extinctions then they would have disappeared during the 80,000 years before humans arrived not within 5,000 years of their arrival.

[Okeefenokee]

Blame whitey.

[C-Mag]

Blame whitey.

Actually we will have to blame the Redskins

[Speaker to Animals]

Thousands of years ago in northwestern North America, large animal species, among them the woolly mammoth and the horse, became extinct. Among the proposed explanations for this is one known as the blitzkrieg hypothesis — that humans entering the region rapidly wiped the animals out through overhunting.

The validity of that explanation, and others, depends in parts on the timing of the extinctions. How many thousands of years ago did the animals disappear?

Until now, the answer to that question has been 13,000 to 15,000 years ago. But those dates come from the youngest reliably dated fossils that have been found, and who is to say there aren’t even younger fossils out there?

A new study has come up with a far different answer, using a far different technique.

Rather than dating actual fossils, the researchers analyzed DNA found in permanently frozen sediments at a site on the Yukon River in central Alaska. As they report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found evidence that mammoths and horses were still around at least until 10,500 years ago, long after humans arrived.

Earlier studies had shown that DNA from animals’ waste, skin cells and hair could be preserved in permanently frozen sediments.

James Haile and Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues analyzed samples taken from the frozen soil at various depths, corresponding to about 8,000 to 11,000 years ago.

Since humans were known to arrive in the region at least 14,000 years ago, the finding casts doubt on the blitzkrieg hypothesis.

Hunting may have contributed to the decline of these animals, the researchers write, but it “did not deliver the deathblow.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/scien ... undra.html

[SuburbanFarmer]

Nah, definitely need to kill me one of them.

Gonna be a little like this starting at the 2 minute mark

Damn that was intense. Didn't know they could still do that.