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What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

nautil.us

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Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#21

Post by defrost »

arthurbrown wrote: post #19
defrost wrote: post #7

The linked nautil.us article is a one sided poor summary of what is still an ongoing debate with strong beliefs on either side. Two people are quoted: * Jens-Christian Svenning, director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Ecological Dynamics in a Novel Biosphere at Aarhus University. He’s also the lead author on a recent paper published in Cambridge Prisms: Extinction that argues it was not clima…

Could you provide some more details about the Tasmania example? Seems humans reached Tas "at least" ~40,000 years ago from my simple searching, which isnt too far off from the generalised 50,000 mentioned in the article. Which species went extinct before then? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544032...

    This alternative scenario of extinction is even more relevant in areas where climate was the only plausible driver of megafauna extinctions—in areas where there was an absence of temporal human-megafauna coexistence such as in Tasmania
Climate-human interaction associated with southeast Australian megafauna extinction patterns

Nature Communications, 22 November 2019 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13277-0

Discussed by authors: https://theconversation.com/did-people-or-climate-kill-off-t...

A better paper than your find that directly addresses the gap|overlap in Tasmanian megafaune|human record is:

Man and megafauna in Tasmania: closing the gap Quaternary Science Reviews (Jan 2012)

https://sci-hub.ru/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.01.013

Some megafauna were still present when humans arrived (at least two taxa) .. but most had already disappeared from the record and (IIRC) no megafauna bones found in human sites (indicating Mmmm, lunch).

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#22

Post by AlotOfReading »

hnfong wrote: post #16
AlotOfReading wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a real danger in getting misinformation from YouTube channels. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis has been extensively refuted multiple times. The latest such paper ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104502 ) is pretty exhaustive in exploring the history of these ideas and how they fall short.

In your link, the first words of the abstract is: "A series of publications purport to provide evidence that..." So even published papers contain such "misinformation", it isn't specific to Youtube. I have no training in the areas of archaeological evidence, so I don't know what to make of the paper, but it looks like people are just arguing about evidence of whether there was an asteroid impact. It's interesting tho…

My comment was responding specifically to the parent comment about the impact hypothesis, not the overkill hypothesis in TFA. The title is a bit sensationalist, but I get the impulse for gimmicky titles.

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#23

Post by yCombLinks »

hanniabu wrote: post #20
BurningFrog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, we're a native species to Africa, so its whole ecosystem evolved with us. I think of this when I hear about "poachers" killing animals in African nature reserves. How often is that hunter gatherers who been there for thousands of years, and whose hunting is/was really part of the ecosystem?

Comparing hunting with rudimentary weapons to hunting with modern firearms is insane

Not to mention modern mobility

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#25

Post by daemonologist »

deadbolt wrote: post #15
linearrust wrote: post #3

> Defined as large-bodied terrestrial mammals with a mean adult body mass of 2,200 pounds or more, today’s remaining megaherbivores comprise the likes of elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and hippopotamuses. Was there difference in hunter-gatherers in europe/asia/americas compared to africa? Why hadn't the ancient elephants, giraffes, etc been hunted to extinction? > I think work over the past few decades has rather…

> The most devastating blow for the buffalo, wolves, bears, etc was habitat loss. Wasn't the most devastating blow to Buffalo the campaign by settlers to slaughter them, since they were important to the native Americans?

True for the American bison (as far as I know), but there used to be a bunch of species in Eurasia which went extinct or had their range dramatically reduced as part of the broader extinction of megafauna discussed in the article.

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#26

Post by kleiba »

One idea I had a while back is this: with all our modern technology in stem cell research, gene modification and cloning, shouldn't it be possible to recreate actual living clones from prehistoric dinosaur DNA? I mean, sure, these giant wild animals could potentially become dangerous, but how about we confine them to a remote island or so?!

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#27

Post by alserio »

kleiba wrote: post #26

One idea I had a while back is this: with all our modern technology in stem cell research, gene modification and cloning, shouldn't it be possible to recreate actual living clones from prehistoric dinosaur DNA? I mean, sure, these giant wild animals could potentially become dangerous, but how about we confine them to a remote island or so?!

Good idea, like a park of something? The most difficult part would be naming it. You could go for something like Cretaceus Park, but it doesn't sound too good.

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#28

Post by Nursie »

hnfong wrote: post #16
AlotOfReading wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a real danger in getting misinformation from YouTube channels. The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis has been extensively refuted multiple times. The latest such paper ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104502 ) is pretty exhaustive in exploring the history of these ideas and how they fall short.

In your link, the first words of the abstract is: "A series of publications purport to provide evidence that..." So even published papers contain such "misinformation", it isn't specific to Youtube. I have no training in the areas of archaeological evidence, so I don't know what to make of the paper, but it looks like people are just arguing about evidence of whether there was an asteroid impact. It's interesting tho…

My reading of the paper was that it attacks even the need for there to be any special explanation for events around that time period as the 'evidence' for something major happening, from impacts to global wildfire, is simply missing.

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#29

Post by knifie_spoonie »

alserio wrote: post #27
kleiba wrote: post #26

One idea I had a while back is this: with all our modern technology in stem cell research, gene modification and cloning, shouldn't it be possible to recreate actual living clones from prehistoric dinosaur DNA? I mean, sure, these giant wild animals could potentially become dangerous, but how about we confine them to a remote island or so?!

Good idea, like a park of something? The most difficult part would be naming it. You could go for something like Cretaceus Park, but it doesn't sound too good.

Billy's Cloneasaurus Park

Re: What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?

#30

Post by kleiba »

alserio wrote: post #27
kleiba wrote: post #26

One idea I had a while back is this: with all our modern technology in stem cell research, gene modification and cloning, shouldn't it be possible to recreate actual living clones from prehistoric dinosaur DNA? I mean, sure, these giant wild animals could potentially become dangerous, but how about we confine them to a remote island or so?!

Good idea, like a park of something? The most difficult part would be naming it. You could go for something like Cretaceus Park, but it doesn't sound too good.

Oh, a park! Like, where people come and can look at the creatures for an entrance fee? Yeah, sure why not. Also like your naming idea, perhaps something a little catchier?
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