[HN Gopher] What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?
___________________________________________________________________
What Happened to Ancient Megafauna?
Author : jnord
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-07-15 22:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| This is not about assigning blame, says Svenning. "People who
| lived thousands of years ago never had access to the full
| picture. These things took place across long time scales and big
| spatial scales over which no one had an overview; whatever people
| did, it was difficult to see the consequences. Plus, of course,
| people just had to survive the best they could." - lol even
| linearrust wrote:
| > 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 convincingly
| demonstrated that humans had a pretty substantial part in the
| extinction
|
| A substantial part in the extinction? What does that mean? The
| extermination of the buffalo in the US required industrial scale
| resources ( guns, railroads, etc ) along with the migration of
| millions of europeans and habitat loss ( via farming ). It was a
| conscious and intentional effort. Are they claiming something
| similar happened throughout much of europe, asia and americas
| more than 50,000 year ago?
|
| > "When we restore forests, we can't just think about the trees,"
| he says. "We must think about the animals that belong there."
|
| This. The most devastating blow for the buffalo, wolves, bears,
| etc was habitat loss. It was ultimately what did them in. Did
| ancient hunter-gatherers alter their environment to such a degree
| to wipe out herds of giant animals from entire continents?
|
| I have a hard time believing that hunter gathers in tiny tribes
| traveling on foot with primitive weapons could have hunted and
| wiped out entire species of large animals from continents. I wish
| they would give more specifics.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > 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?
|
| One theory is that they gradually adapted as humans developed.
|
| Once humans spread out to other continents the change was too
| rapid for the megafauna on those continents to adapt.
| simonh wrote:
| Also there were megafauna extinctions in Africa, just over a
| longer period of time. Then humans expand out of Africa, and
| within a few tens of thousands of years most of the extra-
| African megafauna are gone.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Consider that African megafauna have co-existed with early
| hominids and eventually humans for millions of years. They may
| have simply adapted to human predation successfully enough to
| survive, as one factor.
|
| Whereas in North America and elsewhere you have the sudden (on
| the evolutionary time scale) arrival of Homo Sapiens who are
| likely already very skilled and advanced hunters among a
| population of prey animals that have never experienced such a
| predator.
|
| It's also possible that in tandem, climate change was less
| severe in Africa than elsewhere over the last 50k years.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 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?
| hanniabu wrote:
| Comparing hunting with rudimentary weapons to hunting with
| modern firearms is insane
| yCombLinks wrote:
| Not to mention modern mobility
| hanniabu wrote:
| Plus cameras and drones
| adolph wrote:
| Wild hogs seem to handle it pretty well
| Zanfa wrote:
| They also start breeding at < 2 years, can have multiple
| litters per year of 10+ piglets. Rhinos mature at 5 years
| (10 for males) and the gestation period for a single calf
| is 15 months.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Open season has been now called for wild "super" hogs in
| some areas, and that makes a difference. Pregnant sows,
| young hogs are now OK to kill any time in these areas.
|
| Hunting 1000s of years ago didn't include "don't kill the
| pregnant animals, or children". It meant "I'm hungry" and
| "food".
| nkrisc wrote:
| Wild hogs are not megafauna. It would probably be equally
| difficult to hunt squirrels into extinction.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Feral != wild
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Hunter gatherers who are killing Rhinos only to sell their
| grounded horns to some idiots in China/etc.?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That's not the only hunting banned in national parks!
| bbarnett wrote:
| _Whereas in North America and elsewhere you have the sudden
| (on the evolutionary time scale) arrival of Homo Sapiens who
| are likely already very skilled and advanced hunters among a
| population of prey animals that have never experienced such a
| predator._
|
| On some islands off the Northern coast of BC, there are dwarf
| deer that locals just walk up to, and smack on the head with
| a baseball bat. Right or wrong, it sort of highlights the
| point.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >Consider that African megafauna have co-existed with early
| hominids
|
| It is this imho Animals in Africa are more scared by the
| sounds of people than lions.
|
| https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/october/human-
| voice...
|
| And the bigger ones like Hippos are hyper aggressive to
| humans, allegedly they kill more people than any other
| African animal.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Interesting though, that seemingly unlike North America's
| Mammoths and Mastodon's, African Elephants never became a
| concentrated target for hunting enough to be driven into
| extinction.
|
| Though that may just argue that they were unable to adapt
| to climate change in NA fast enough rather than being
| hunted to extinction.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| They don't know any particular specifics. Our understanding of
| human organization during the late pleistocene and early
| Holocene is poor, bordering on non-existent. However, I don't
| find it particularly hard to imagine humans as a major factor,
| even if I have some doubts about this particular argument.
|
| First, you have to understand that about the late quaternary
| extinctions, we know not all quaternary extinctions were
| anthropogenic. Ecosystems were experiencing a lot of different
| stressors around that time, and by the time extinction actually
| happens there may have been only small populations left for
| centuries or millennia. Ecological resilience is also a bit of
| a funny thing. You might think that you make 10 species extinct
| has 10x more impact than just 1 extinction, but there isn't a
| linear relationship. In many ecosystems, there's very little
| impact from most local extinctions as the graph thins out until
| all the systemic resilience is gone and the whole thing
| suddenly collapses into a new state. Did that proximate
| cause(s) of the last extinction cause the rapid shift?
|
| Fantastically deadly hunters like humans that are specialized
| to megafaunal hunting being able to push the most vulnerable
| and stressed parts of the ecosystem over the edge isn't an
| obviously absurd argument to me.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Thinking out loud... I wonder if it could still be true based
| on the fact that the larger the animal, the longer the
| gestation period.
|
| For small animals like rabbits, it's about 30 days - so their
| chances of "multiplying like rabbits" is obvious - you're not
| going to wipe out rabbits faster than the supply.
|
| As you move up the size scale, the gestation period gets longer
| and longer, and each kill gets harder to replace (wales come in
| at around 18 months!). Kill a mega-sloth and its chances of
| species survival dramatically drop!
| shawn_w wrote:
| The number of offspring in each litter tends to drop with
| increasing size, too.
| deadbolt wrote:
| > 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?
| daemonologist wrote:
| 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.
| dghughes wrote:
| I think the word buffalo really confuses people.
|
| Bison are in North America while buffalo (small b) are in
| Asia and Africa.
|
| >Wasn't the most devastating blow to Buffalo the campaign by
| settlers to slaughter them
|
| I hope everyone in the city of Buffalo, NY are OK lol
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo
| buffalo.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Not all megafauna are herd animals on the scale of American
| buffalo. Others were limited to smaller areas or less numerous
| to begin with, and the ones that survive are probably those
| that started off most numerous. African elephants are hanging
| on by a thread, relative to their original number they're down
| something like 98%.
|
| Africa is also _huge_ - around four times the size of the
| entire continental USA - and suffered perhaps less during the
| Ice Ages than Northern America or Eurasia, where megafauna
| would have been squeezed by both the ice - and associated
| climate changes further south - and a hungry and increasingly
| innovative human population.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _I have a hard time believing that hunter gathers in tiny
| tribes traveling on foot with primitive weapons could have
| hunted and wiped out entire species of large animals from
| continents_
|
| One thing humans could was starting fires that would drive many
| animals into a designated killbox, among other ways of
| "cheating". Humans were uniquely capable (at this size scale,
| at least) to both hunt species in excess to their need _and_
| cause outsized damage to their habitat in the process.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The default is to outpace your need. Imagine if we evolved to
| somehow hunt just enough meat. There'd be some of us with
| less efficient systems for controlling that behavior that end
| up starving while they think they are bringing in enough
| food. Thats no good for reproductive fitness. Overshooting on
| the other hand is good.
|
| Another factor, symbiotic relationships tend take much longer
| to evolve that carefully balanced relationship between
| symbiont and symbiont. Parasitic relationships tend to evolve
| sooner and its also not uncommon the parasite overshoots and
| kills off its own host.
| trhway wrote:
| >I have a hard time believing that hunter gathers in tiny
| tribes traveling on foot with primitive weapons could have
| hunted and wiped out entire species of large animals from
| continents
|
| last mammoth died just 4000 years ago on an Arctic island -
| i.e. without humans they survived far longer even in pretty
| harsh conditions.
| christkv wrote:
| They are guessing. Probably a ton of compounding factors rather
| than a single one. Ice age (probably a big one for anything not
| in Africa), hunting, habitat compression, food competition,
| etc. I'm also guessing :)
| nihzm wrote:
| > I have a hard time believing that hunter gathers in tiny
| tribes traveling on foot with primitive weapons could have
| hunted and wiped out entire species of large animals from
| continents. I wish they would give more specifics.
|
| This made me recall having read something related to it in the
| book Sapiens [1]. Indeed, I went looking and quoting from
| chapter 4
|
| > All the settlers of Australia had at their disposal was Stone
| Age technology. How could they cause an ecological disaster?
| There are three explanations that mesh quite nicely.
|
| > Large animals - the primary victims of the Australian
| extinction - breed slowly. Pregnancy is long, offspring per
| pregnancy are few, and there are long breaks between
| pregnancies. Consequently, if humans cut down even one
| diprotodon every few months, it would be enough to cause
| diprotodon deaths to outnumber births. Within a few thousand
| years the last, lonesome diprotodon would pass away, and with
| her the entire species. [...]
|
| > The second explanation is that by the time Sapiens reached
| Australia, they had already mastered fire agriculture. Faced
| with an alien and threatening environment, they deliberately
| burned vast areas of impassable thickets and dense forests to
| create open grasslands, which attracted more easily hunted
| game, and were better suited to their needs. They thereby
| completely changed the ecology of large parts of Australia
| within a few short millennia. [...]
|
| > A third explanation agrees that hunting and fire agriculture
| played a significant role in the extinction, but emphasises
| that we can't completely ignore the role of climate. The
| climate changes that beset Australia about 45,000 years ago
| destabilised the ecosystem and made it particularly vulnerable.
| [...]
|
| So the extinction was on a very different timescale from your
| buffalo example, but an extintion nonetheless. In the ellipses
| the book briefly points to some evidence to support these
| theories.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Hu...
| graemep wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Elephants and rhinos do survive in Asia.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I'm still digesting the full paper [1] but it looks like the gist
| is that when you put all the previously published data together,
| the timing of megafauna extinction statistically lines up with
| human arrival better than climate change.
|
| The most important pieces of evidence they seem to look at is
| fungal spores in fossilized poop and sedimentary ancient DNA:
|
| _> Further, other studies show contrasting patterns. For
| example, a sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) study from the Yukon
| shows strong megafauna decline between 21 and 14,500 years ago,
| prior to the loss of the mammoth steppe biome and the Younger
| Dryas. In addition, as already mentioned, many extinct megafauna
| species have last occurrences in the Early or even Middle
| Holocene, that is, during the relatively stable climate of the
| Holocene, meaning that a climatic cause for their extinction is
| unlikely given their previous survival through numerous, massive
| climatic shifts throughout the Pleistocene, including long and
| warm interglacial periods._
|
| _> An increasing number of studies look at local and regional
| dynamics in the overall abundance of large herbivores at high
| spatiotemporal resolution using dung-associated fungal spores.
| Many of these are able to pinpoint declines to timeframes where
| the climate was stable, for example, North America ~14-13,000
| years ago, prior to the Younger Dryas cooling, and 41,000 years
| ago in Australia at a time of no substantial climate change_
|
| These techniques are still very new and they're so sensitive that
| they should be taken with a grain of salt, sedaDNA especially
| since it amplifies tiny snippets of DNA found in permafrost. We
| assume permafrost behaves like an annually laminated sediment but
| that's controversial and archaeology/paleontology have had plenty
| of problems before with DNA snippets and contamination.
|
| [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-prisms-
| ext...
| cryptonector wrote:
| This guy (https://www.youtube.com/@Antonio_Zamora) makes a very
| solid argument that in the Younger Dryas a meteorite impactor hit
| the ice sheet over the Great Lakes, sending huge ice chunks
| flying that created elliptical craters that then quickly refilled
| that are called the Carolina Bays, and which are ubiquitous in
| the South East, and which point back at the impact point(s) (I
| think he says there were two impact points) in Michigan. The
| amount of energy delivered by all those ice chunks seems to have
| been several megatons (of TNT) per square mile. Enough chunks
| were ejected, and carolina bays formed, to have likely caused an
| extinction event.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 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.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| YouTube is like the anti-Wikipedia. It's easy to create
| videos and the only check are comments buried 200 comments
| down
| hnfong wrote:
| 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 though that the title of the paper is called
| "Complete Refutation" of the _hypothesis_ and not of the
| _evidence_. If you 're nit-picky enough you'd notice that the
| YDIH isn't a "scientific" hypothesis per se since hypotheses
| about what happened in the past doesn't really give testable
| predictions, and actually what they did in the paper was to
| refute all the evidence of the hypothesis -- but it seems to
| me it's still theoretically possible for new evidence to come
| up that definitely supports YDIH.
|
| Also, AFAICT this only rules out the asteroid impact. It
| still doesn't rule out the possibility that the abrupt
| climate changes during the Younger Dryas causing stress to
| the megafauna population, which presumably is another thing.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 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.
| Nursie wrote:
| 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.
| defrost wrote:
| 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 climate change but rather human hunting that
| caused the extinction of most megaherbivores over the past 50,000
| years.
|
| and
|
| * Felisa Smith, a conservation paleoecologist and professor at
| the University of New Mexico, believes that the human impact on
| megafauna extinction is no longer up for debate. "I think work
| over the past few decades has rather convincingly demonstrated
| that humans had a pretty substantial part in the extinction,"
| says Smith.
|
| and ... no other views are given.
|
| This, currently, isn't a slam dunk for one side, there are strong
| voices on the other side who can cite examples where humans
| certainly ate megafauna but not, apparently, enough to wipe them
| out and also point at concurrent pockets (eg: Tasmania) where
| there were megafauna, as _yet_ no humans, and still the megafauna
| died out.
| Xen9 wrote:
| Darwin (1) near consistently included each and every argument &
| counter-argument to the point where it becomes boring and
| unreasonable to go any further (2) was absolutely explicit of
| what was NOT included to the point that there were redunant
| remarks about that!
|
| ---
|
| The view of Smith is laughable, for the human population has
| changed by more than few orders of magnitude since those times.
|
| Yet it would be plausible that a global MF ecosystem was
| distrupted somehow.
|
| Another possible reason megafauna died: they eat plants and
| grew on top of an ecosystem where there was not much
| competition for plants, and then an increase in efficiency of
| bacteria, bugs, invertebrates and other compact herbivore
| species in consumption of the limited amount of plant food
| pulled the legs under them. Whales were not herbivores, and
| possibly therefore not subject to same mechanisms (though
| saying this sort of ruins the metaphor of pulling legs from
| underneath).
| arthurbrown wrote:
| 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...
| defrost wrote:
| 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).
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Here's my question: if humans caused megafauna extinction, why
| did this not happen in Africa? That's where many of the
| megafauna continue to live. But humans came from Africa.
| slibhb wrote:
| The theory is that African megafauna evolved alongside
| humans, learned to fear them, and developed strategies to
| avoid them. Whereas other megafauna didn't, so when humans
| left Africa, they were defenseless.
| Salgat wrote:
| Which is the norm for invasive species. I imagine humans
| specifically concentrated on megafauna because, why not go
| after the single big easy-to-find animal that will feed
| your family for weeks?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| To be fair it probably took some time to figure out
| methods to make mammoth steak last for weeks without
| refrigeration
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I was reading an article, some time ago, about Amazon
| Indians that actually like rotten meat. Apparently, it is
| quite nutritious, doesn't hurt them (maybe acquired
| immunity?), and is probably fairly easy to digest (it's
| halfway there, already).
|
| Scavenging spoiled meat is a fairly classic natural
| trait, and even apex predators won't pass up an easy
| snack.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Humans do it today with steaks. 'aged' steaks are
| basically rotting. They are tender.
| permo-w wrote:
| rotting and aging are very different things. rotting is
| simply being consumed by fungus/bacteria, aging is a more
| complex process that involves controlling the liquid
| levels in the meat in order to make it last longer (wet
| aging) or taste better (dry aging)
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I'd say not 'very different', just scale.
|
| 'Controlled' rotting.
|
| There are fungus and bacteria in the aging process, just
| the temperature and humidity is controlled.
|
| But, not sure of exact technical definition of 'rotting'
| is, or 'aging'. So we'd be debating different
| definitions.
|
| I'd say generally both have fungus and bacteria, and
| 'aging' is under controlled conditions, and 'rotting' is
| just out in out door environment which is different
| temperature and humidity.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Controlled temperature and humidity makes all the
| difference when it comes to the speed at which bacteria
| can multiply. Aged meat has many orders of magnitude less
| bacteria than rotten one.
| jzxy wrote:
| >Scavenging spoiled meat is a fairly classic natural
| trait, and even apex predators won't pass up an easy
| snack.
|
| It has to be said that humans in particular have stomach
| acidity on the levels of scavenger type meat eaters.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjo
| urn...
|
| There's been a decent amount of research on the relation
| between stomach pH and diet, with animal species that
| have pronounced scavenger tendencies being on the lowest
| end of the spectrum, which puts an interesting light on
| the sort of diet the earliest humans may have had.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Probably approaches like jerky and pemmican.
| conductr wrote:
| They perhaps had easier access to glacial melt, aka
| refrigeration? There's an exhibit in the La Brea museum
| that shows hunters submerging mammoth meat in shallow
| waters as a form of preservation
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Once humans figured out how to cook meat over a fire, it
| probably didn't take too long to figure out how to
| preserve meat using smoke and less heat.
| Log_out_ wrote:
| And there is african extinct megafauna.for example the
| giant birds of madagascar whos giant eggshells inspired the
| bird roc in arabian folktales. I wouldnt be suprised if
| africa too is littered with human extinct megafauna which
| simply never had the reproductionrate or cleverness to keep
| up. Which is a great arg for the theory that one
| intelligent spezies breeds/uplifts all other creatures to
| intelligence.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| Somewhat speculative of course--the extant megafauna you're
| referring to are somewhat endangered and but also don't
| represent great sources of usable materials such as meat or
| skins. Additionally, many are quite dangerous -- rhinos,
| hippos, and elephants to be specific.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Where do we draw the megafauna line? Do gazelle count?
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Apparently, yes...
|
| > In zoology, megafauna (from Greek megas megas "large"
| and Neo-Latin fauna "animal life") are large animals. The
| precise definition of the term varies widely, though a
| common threshold is approximately 45 kilograms (99 lb),
| with other thresholds as low as 10 kilograms (22 lb) or
| as high as 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb). Large body size is
| generally associated with other traits, such as having a
| slow rate of reproduction, and in large herbivores,
| reduced or negligible adult mortality from being killed
| by predators.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafauna
| billfruit wrote:
| Why is 'fauna' termed as neo-latin? Is it a modern
| coinage?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Yeah, invented by Linnaeus to complement flora. Flora
| itself is only a couple centuries older.
| ds_opseeker wrote:
| Another theory-- there are lots of places in Africa where
| people cannot live due to disease (without modern medicine).
| This creates refuges for wildlife.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I mention this only to add to your informative post. Humans
| almost drove _whales_ extinct because their rendered fat
| produced less fat for lamp fuel, and they are substantially
| pelagic. We almost drove bison extinct in NA in a matter of
| decades. We are driving massive numbers of species across
| trophic levels extinct, right now
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/29/us-anima...
|
| It isn't a choice, climate change related habitat changes
| probably contributed - which is also extremely pertinent today
| - but when you find the extinct species bones in human habitats
| it's a fair sign we were a contributing and possibly decisive
| cause.
| jccooper wrote:
| Whales and bison were subject to very modern techniques.
| While sailing whalers did stress whale populations, it was
| the steam launch and exploding harpoon that really did the
| whales in. Bison were destroyed with rifles, which are new in
| themselves, but the mass-slaughter behavior was enabled by
| rail transport. Plus they were plenty stressed by competition
| with cattle, bred for rail transport, and enclosure of the
| prairie by barbed wire.
|
| Earlier lithic-technology subsistence whale and bison hunting
| doesn't seem to have been a big problem for either. I won't
| say that early human hunting didn't contribute to or cause
| mega-fauna extinctions (in fact, it seems quite likely) but
| that's not highly analogous to these more recent events.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I agree, but while the technology wasn't the same, the
| timeframes were not comparable, either. As long the rate in
| of the selection pressure exceeds the ability of the
| population to adapt, it is just a question of time.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Thank you for saying this, I had the same thought. I am not a
| researcher in this area, but it's one I pay attention to, and I
| have _not_ gotten the impression that the question is as
| settled as this article makes it seem.
|
| Actually, what I should say is that I always read articles or
| watch videos that make it seem like a slam-dunk case from
| either side (human predation or climate change), which I
| interpret as a) signs of a contentious ongoing debate, and b) a
| suggestion that the real answer will be found to be a
| complicated interaction between these factors, and many others
| as well. As it is with most things, frankly.
| kleiba wrote:
| 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?!
| alserio wrote:
| 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.
| knifie_spoonie wrote:
| Billy's Cloneasaurus Park
| kleiba wrote:
| Nailed it!
| kleiba wrote:
| 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?
| alserio wrote:
| Imagine a new generation of kids that likes dinosaurs and
| can actually see them roaming. Can't wait to see the look
| on their faces when I tell them that I was into dinosaurs
| when they were still underground
| ainiriand wrote:
| I believe that you will only need one IT person and I would
| like the job!
| defrost wrote:
| UiX is key, haz u 3D file interface for UNIX system?
| Recursing wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-extinction ,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_woolly_mammoth and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrenean_ibex#Cloning_project
|
| A huge issue with "Jurassic Park" style cloning is that old DNA
| degrades very quickly
| djmips wrote:
| One thought I always had about reviving prehistoric animals is
| that I feel we've come to understand that animals live in a
| symbiotic relationship with microorganisms. Some even have
| specialized diets. Then there's the so called epigenetics. So
| besides the missing microbiota there may be other factors that
| are missing and can't easily be recreated.
| morkalork wrote:
| Coming from the other direction, there's a book about all the
| plants that were dependant on megafauna for processes like
| seed dispersal that are sorta hanging around still called
| "The Ghosts of Evolution".
| chucke1992 wrote:
| It died.
| Keysh wrote:
| The (Nautilus) article is confusing in the way it conflates
| "megaherbivores" (herbivores weighing more than 1 [metric] ton)
| and "megafauna" (any animal, regardless of what it eats, weighing
| more than 45 kg[1]).
|
| Also: "Giant ground sloths, musk oxen, and short-faced kangaroos:
| All have gone the way of the dodo" -- A) Of those three animals,
| only the giant ground sloth was big enough to qualify as a
| megaherbivore; and B) musk oxen are very much not extinct!
|
| [1] Which I assume is a translation of an older definition using
| 100 lb as the lower limit.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| I always figured they were delicious.
| imp0cat wrote:
| They probably weren't THAT delicious, but the portions were
| huge! ;)
| rfwhyte wrote:
| It's always seemed patently obvious to me that humans were the
| primary cause of megafauna extinctions. First and foremost
| because the timing of extinctions aligns so closely with the
| arrival of humans in a given region, but also because the climate
| has changed dramatically over the past few million years or so,
| with cooler or warmer periods happening frequently over
| geological timespans, yet we don't see similar extinction events
| happening around climatic cycles / events other than those that
| happen to align with the arrival of humans in a given region. The
| Mammoths of North America for example survived numerous cycles of
| warming and cooling, some far more drastic than the most recent
| ice age and subsequent warming period, so why was it only the
| most recent one that caused their extinction? We already have
| control data for the effect climate had on megafauna populations,
| the only variable left is us humans.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-16 23:01 UTC)