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What Killed the Great Beasts of North America?
sciencehabit writes "Until about 11,000 years ago, mammoths, giant beavers, and other massive mammals roamed North America. Many researchers have blamed their demise on incoming Paleoindians, the first Americans, who allegedly hunted them to extinction. But a new study points to climate and environmental changes instead. The findings could have implications for conservation strategies, including controversial proposals for 'rewilding' lions and elephants into North America."
My bad. Sabertooth tiger and Mammoth just tasted so good.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I see great hambeasts of North America roaming about everytime I go to Walmart. Largest in the world.
We have no shortage of large, XL, XXL, XXXL, or XXXXL wildlife.
Lions and Elephants? Time to get a 450 WinMag!
Seriously, nobody is actually proposing this, are they? Just some PETA dweeb, smoking crack.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oh, the orbit matters... but the orbit is EXTREMELY predictable even its wobble and orientation. It might, perhaps tip the scale during the (likely ongoing) pleistocene (Where 90% of our time is spent in ice age with 10% warm snaps that should have already ended by now, contrary to spiking upwards instead) but ebbs on a timeline that should have had the pleistocene happening essentially since beginning of observable time (which it has not.) So, it's a factor, but not a decisive one. Continental arrangements and landmasses propensity for temperature extremity vs. oceanic propensity for temperature moderation and long-distance transport matter far more (even than tilt, given measuring the southern hemisphere vs. northern.) And yet, in spite of the fact that the continents and oceanic currents are still in the same messy tangle they have been for the entirety of the multi-million year pleistocene, these beasts didn't go extinct during an of the previous warm-snaps... just the one we arrived in... and now that we should be quickly descending into ice age, instead we're headed the other way. This article is of interest, but it is not argument against anthropogenic extinctions or climate change.
Finally an equal to the current alpha-predator family of Sierra Uniform Victor.
Large mammals managed to survive for a long, long time before people came to Americas and then, shortly after people came, they were killed off by "climate and environmental changes"? Sounds a bit fishy to me!
This is where the Samurai crab comes from...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
People killed them. Either by direct means or global warming.
Or, I blame God.
What about Justin Bieber, I'm sure he had something to do with the extinction of the mammoths.
To be on the safe side, sign this petition The species you save may be your own.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is this to say that the Earth's climate has gone through natural changes over the centuries? Warming and cooling? All by itself?! I thought global warming - I mean - climate change - was caused by man burning fossil fuels.
Well, most of human existence is fighting one thing or another. Artificiality is pretty much by definition anything we do.
They found a wormhole in the Pacific at this strange black temple on an island and went back in time to hunt.
Duh.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It hardly seems wild if there aren't wild things that can eat people in it.
When will someone kill two birds with one stone. . .and make Soylent Bieber ???
Am I the only one who pictured Bruce Willis in Twelve Monkeys, staring dumbfoundedly at a lion in the ruins of Baltimore, after reading that?
When will someone kill two birds with one stone. . .and make Soylent Bieber ???
Potentially answering one question with another... Would you eat it?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There are very few cases where introducing a non-native species into the wild has turned out to be a good thing. There are hundreds of examples of things going wrong. Just look up invasive species. Our track record is not good.
Best slashdotting message I've seen yet:
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The entire point of the original article was supposed to be that People didn't do it, but it appears that People killed the whitepaper, or at least, slashdotters did. Whether slashdotters are people remains to be proven.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
We know it was people. They just used to think it was the paleoindians, but now they are thinking it was 20th and 21st century man that killed them with their manmade global warming.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
People killed them. Either by direct means or global warming.
Or, I blame God.
There were never enough Paleoindians, or even Pre-Columbian indians in north america to have killed all of these animals.
The indigenous populations of the Americas (north and south) was somewhere well under 112 million prior 1492.
(Yup the Columbus gets the blame for native population collapse, even though far earlier arrivals could certainly have been the vector for deadly diseases).
I never believed the hunted to extinction nonsense. (Not that Native Americans were very good stewards of the land, they had been known to stampede entire herds of buffalo over cliffs just for their tongues, and a few hides, leaving the vast majority to rot.) But their population density simply was never great enough to exhaust the resources.
I don't find the idea that a steadily improving (more benign) climate over the time of these species demise seems likely either. With the retreat of the ice age glaciation opening more and more land the pressure on these species would have been less and less as time went on. We are always quick to blame man kind, (but apparently only western European man-kind) for every tragedy befalling the environment, (or the indians), without considering that disease could have been just as likely.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You'd have to be crazy.....
Seriously...the earth is hotter than it's ever been before...so I was told, by Mr. Al Gore.
Actually, I think it'd be rather cool to have some wild elephants in North America.
I say we bring Asian male elephants and African females, the result will be a unique hybrid to N. America.
Something needs to keep the surplus population in check. Help weed out some of the slow and stupid as well.
We spend billions of dollars a year making sure that the slow and stupid are protected from themselves and others and even encouraged to breed in order to get more handouts. Why would we suddenly decide to thin them out?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I thought porn brought that about in the 90s?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The research was funded by the no-limit hunting lobby. "Unrestricted hunting doesn't wipe out entire animal populations - climate (and legislative) change do!"
Yep, I looked outside and theres snow and ice everywhere,
however it is warming slightly. In the past couple of days the temperature has risen from 243 to 267 thats a 10% increase
Unfortunately TFA is Slashdotted, so an informed discussion of the actual science will not happen today.
Before reading this study, I was learning heavily to the human-predation side of the debate, because as I understand it multiple climate zones of North America were affected simultaneously and over a very short time period that happens to coincide with the development of Clovis spearpoints.
No doubt the researchers have a rebuttal for this explanation, but like I said ... it's slashdotted.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I'm sure he sounded perfectly reasonable. The ancient aliens theorists do a credible job sometimes. Where's the evidence. That's all I'm asking for... verifiable, peer reviewed evidence.
Great, that's just what we need. Africanized Asian elephants. Have you not heard what happened when we Africanized honeybees? We'll have swarms of tempermental pachyderms stampeding through every village in the Great Plains before mid-century.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
I very stupidly just Googled "giant beaver" at work.
There are several hundred elephants already in the United States. The number of big cats is startling as well -- for some species there may be a greater number in the U.S. than left in the wild. All we need now is a couple of releases... (queue the PETA folks doing something stupid).
Seems likely that this is the article. If so, I've only read the abstract so far, but TFS seems to misrepresent the authors' conclusion.
TFS claims:
whereas the abstract says:
In other words, the authors are not saying humans were not involved in the extinctions. They are saying human predation cannot be the *sole* cause.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
There are wolves, bears, snakes, mountain lions, and alligators out there. There are plenty of things to eat you without introducing new problems. One more thing to consider is that these creatures don't respect boundaries on a map. If you introduce lions to the US, they'll probably find their way into Mexico and even further south.
He's not talking about "ancient aliens". There is nothing in his book about "ancient aliens". His entire thesis is based upon the people who were extra-tall in the Americas being 100% human.
Typical pop skeptic. Create a red herring, ignore actual argument, and then claim "verifiable, peer reviewed".
And by the way, the book cites, "verifiable, peer-reviewed" articles about the archaeological findings.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Read "Breasts" at first glance?
My personal theory is that the pleistocene has been so cold because of the historically (4 billion years) high oxygen levels and the significant amount of historical carbon that has been sequestered underground.
Humans are changing that, we're sucking all the sequestered carbon out and putting it into the atmosphere where it hasn't been since the dinosaurs. Before all the science deniers reply, this is scary because humanity was born in the ice ages of the Pleistocene we've never experienced a planet as warm as the dinosaurs where there weren't any ice caps and it was 100 degrees in the northern reaches of Canada (yes I know the continents were in different places so Canada was at a lower latitude).
Humans will survive a warmer earth I have no doubt, but the potential for massive disruption to the food supply is there and if that happens there's going to be some really ugly war that humanity might not survive. The reason to be scared of global warming is because of those changing fertile zones, humanity goes batshit crazy when starvation is eminent.
...of COURSE the explanation (today) is 'climate change'.
My shoe was untied this morning, I'm pretty sure it was due to climate change.
-Styopa
Ancient Aliens... obviously.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
That bit about continents *is* a standard theory... but it has nothing on 11k years ago. Same thing goes for the orbit. So no, it isn't the orbit, and it isn't the landmasses.
Let's see... you have the North American Clovis Point people going extinct at the same time. So it isn't *who* killed them either. If the Clovis people had killed them off, you wouldn't have had them going extinct.
Also, at the same time, you have wildfires throughout North America. That soot contains microdiamonds.
You also have mammoths in Siberia at that time, flash frozen (Alaska Science Forum November 1, 1976. Mystery of the Mammoth and the Buttercups Article #122 by J. Holland).
You also have great areas in Alaska of jumbled up, blasted fauna caracases, many of them torn apart.
Now, all told, I'm going to posit -- and I doubt I'm the first to do so -- that an asteroid hit a glacier up against the south side of a mountain in Northern Alaska. The first thing it did, was melt/throw the ice of the glacier in a great parabolic trajectory. The water of the glacier went into near space, froze to extremely low temperatures, and came down. But meanwhile, the asteroid impacted the south side of the mountain, and vaporized, causing a fireball to project back into North America.
Thus the soot, thus the extinctions (animal and Clovis culture), thus the flash-frozen mammoth, thus the tectites, thus the great boneyards.
And no, for those creationists here, I extremely doubt that ANY of this had to do with Noah's flood. Noah's flood dates to about 5000 ya, and seems to match the Madagascar chevrons and 8' of river mud, pretty well. This is something different.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Considering that elephants don't even blink at the idea of a 300-mile seasonal migration, and that their fossils were found spread well across both American continents "moving the herd closer to the equator" is hardly a difficult adaptation. If anything, climate-wise, they were better off then, here, than they are now, in Africa.
"We did, we did."
It means nothing of the sort.
There was no shortage of protein leading to cannibalism, that myth has been debunked for over 20 years.
And Nat Geo never said the cliff dwellers were eaten by the Aztecs. There's not a shred of evidence that the Astecs ever made it as far north as new mexico.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
People used to hunt them with spears ! Man up, you wussies!
If we had more people like you, we'd be overrun with mammoths.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And drinking. Man, those mammals were *wild!*
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The research was funded by the no-limit hunting lobby. "Unrestricted hunting doesn't wipe out entire animal populations - climate (and legislative) change do!"
In that case, I wonder why we put so much effort in fighting pathogenic germs. We should just outlaw them, and they'll disappear!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Seriously.
It's not bad enough that these scumbags have a stranglehold on scientific research publishing. The primary website to which the summary points requires the reader to allow so many third-party scripts to run that I simply gave up on the article altogether.
Oh, and FUCK SLASHDOT for pointing me to such a piece-of-shit website in the first place.
Check out my novel.
Actully, I think that African lions would be unlikely to survive in North America. Even mountain lions and wolves, who are native, are having a hard time of it. And a large part of the reason is people.
Elephants are also unlikely to survive, but they might have a better chance than in Africa. (I don't know about S.E. Asia.) The thing is, if you have a tractor, then an elephant is unlikely to seem like a reasonable option. If you don't, then you're unlikely to be able to afford to feed it. And wild elephants need a LOT of space. Which make protecting them against poachers difficult.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That is such a hopeless argument. For one, you do not need a lot of humans to drive megafauna extinct. Not any more than you need a lot of snakes to drive flightless birds extinct on an isolated tropical island.
More importantly, this happened long, long before 1492! Some 13000 years before. The population in 1492 could have been a billion or it could have been one for that matter, but either way still wouldn't have proven or disproven the overkill hypothesis.
People, especially anthropologists who live with native people and/or devote themselves to try to understand their way of life on a deep level, are understandably reluctant to believe such disheartening things about their study subjects. Some of them argue passionately against it, but that is one of the times you need to look a little critically on their actual arguments - especially the things they can't explain.
If humans did not contribute decisively to killing off American megafauna, it was a fantastic coincidence of timing.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I just don't see people walking across Alaska and Canada and finally settling in South America in the course of a few thousand years.
Why not? - A Frenchman in the 1800's walked from Paris to Moscow on stilts in under a year, however his 1000 mile journey was deliberate and had other humans along the way. Humans (like any other species) simply expand their range in the direction of least resistance, which when your at the top of the food chain means, "away from other humans".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So, you're arguing that the Pleistocene was cold because of all the carbon sequestered underground 62+ million years before the Pleistocene started?
Alright, why was the Eocene warmer than now? For that matter, why was the Eocene warmer than the Paleocene, which preceded it, and the Oligocene which followed it?
For that matter, the Eocene's peak temperature was higher than either the Jurrasic or Cretaceous.
And why was the Oligocene colder than the Miocene, which followed it?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
How about you actually study some real Paleoclimatology instead of pulling neo-liberal statements out of your ass?
The truth is, the earth, as a whole, is currently at about the lowest average temperature that can be inferred from the all sources of ancient data. Normally, we should be about 2-3 C higher, globally, given the historical record.
"Global Warming" is just a return to trend and should be expected whether humans are walking around or not.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
1492 is mentioned simply as the high-point of population density in the Americas. (I should have thought that would have been obvious).
13,000 years ago the density was microscopic. So much so that we've only found evidence in a very few special sites.
Small local tribes can only exhaust small local populations, but on continents the size of North and South America, Local doesn't apply, and your tropical island example is really laughable (and I suspect you knew that the minute you typed it, yet you hit that submit button anyway.).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I would hardly call going over a land bridge in the Bering Strait, coming down the coast of Alaska and then crossing the Canadian Rockies a "direction of least resistance".
But people do things for strange reasons, as your story of the guy walking on stilts from Paris to Moscow illustrates. I know if I found myself in a Canadian winter, I may well start walking South and not stop until I got to Tuscon. In fact, considering the weather here in Chicago these last few weeks, I might just find a pair of stilts and head to Rio.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's no reason why humans would have to have killed every last one. Every species has a minimum population it needs to maintain genetic diversity. Killing a species below this would be enough for it die off eventually. Or cutting off the migratory patterns, so that each half is below the minimum. Say the mammoths needed 50,000 to maintain genetic diversity. A population of 95,000 could be split up by human tribes, such that neither side could migrate and interact with the other. In short order, the species would die off.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Small local tribes can only exhaust small local populations
Everywhere in the Americas would have had local tribes inside of a few hundred years. Humans get around. That's how a local problem becomes a continental-scale one.
Except for the facts that get in the way of that. 13000 years ago the Americas were extremely underpopulated.
At the time of Columbus, the best estimates for all of North and South american combined is less than current day Canada.
That's not enough people to drive anything extinct.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Let's see... you have the North American Clovis Point [wikipedia.org] people going extinct at the same time. So it isn't *who* killed them either. If the Clovis people had killed them off, you wouldn't have had them going extinct.
So when a population of predators (humans) kills off all their prey (large tasty mammals), you wouldn't expect them to go extinct? ... What?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
No. during the age of the dinosaurs, Canada was pretty much exactly where it is today. Yes, it was A LOT WARMER (as in tropical) but as you note, the atmosphere had more carbon back then. Here'sa map of da woild for ya, ca. 100Mya
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/f/...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
you didn't read what I said. I claimed nothing. What I said is: Where is the evidence of the giant humans? Show the evidence. Let it be well documented and verifiable. Let peer review determine it's validity. If this all passes, then I'll believe. You're the one who started the argument by saying the Smithsonian Institute created a coverup to hide the evidence in order to further their agenda -- a common argument made by the crackpots you mentioned. You also made an argument based on a "feeling" that the currently accepted theory was not likely. Science and scientific method work.
Except for the facts that get in the way of that. 13000 years ago the Americas were extremely underpopulated.
For driving things extinct? We're not speaking of passenger pigeons but rather of very large mammals who probably never were very numerous.
That's not enough people to drive anything extinct.
I don't know why you would think that.
If you know the history of megafauna mammals then the end of them is obvious.
"Subsequent to the Cretaceous - Paleogene extinction event that eliminated the non-avian dinosaurs about 66 Ma ago, terrestrial mammals underwent a nearly exponential increase in body size as they diversified to occupy the ecological niches left vacant. Starting from just a few kg before the event, maximum size had reached ~50 kg a few million years later, and ~750 kg by the end of the Paleocene. This trend of increasing body mass appears to level off about 40 Ma ago (in the late Eocene), suggesting that physiological or ecological constraints had been reached, after an increase in body mass of over three orders of magnitude. However, when considered from the standpoint of rate of size increase per generation, the exponential increase is found to have continued until the appearance of Indricotherium 30 Ma ago."
So, they got bigger because there was a sudden niche to exploit. The niche ended and eventually they died off as the advantage was lost. Did humans effect the timescale of this, maybe. Did humans change the course of nature, almost certainly not, as if humans aren't part of nature.
BTW, when did the avian dinosaurs go extinct? I can't find that fact.
Before re-introducing the elephant and the lion, let's get the wolf fully established in its old territory. Should take care of the surplus population of troublesome creatures, such as deer, geese, and tourists.
I'm pretty sure my buddy's dating one.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You also have great areas in Alaska of jumbled up, blasted fauna caracases, many of them torn apart.
If you're trying to make a credible argument then linking to a site that talks about evidence of Noah's Flood and finding ancient Nuclear reactors is a BAD idea.
I stole this Sig
Read the book. He presents what he calls the evidence and it's surprisingly interesting.
The evidence of the Smithsonian coverup is also pretty compelling.
I don't know if there were ever giants, but there certainly are human skeletons well over 8 feet, and there have been hundreds of such skeletons, some over 10 feet that have been sent to the Smithsonian. There's a plethora of papers and news accounts and clippings and photographs and receipts from the Smithsonian for "skeleton, human" and giving the outrageous dimensions.
Even if there never were giants, the book is a great read. The author isn't an "alternative historian" or any of that nonsense. He's a documentarian who fell into a very interesting story and writes a very good yarn.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Water was boiling in nothern canada?
You also have great areas in Alaska of jumbled up, blasted fauna caracases, many of them torn apart. [s8int.com]
It could have been an interesting read, if it were not for the fact that all the citations date from the 60s at the most recent... and all the side links to Noah's flood, dinosaur sightings and such.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Wow, yet another 'human' with species hatred so badly that you can totally ignore the 'magnitude' arguments here.
Not at all. The thing here is that intelligence is quite powerful. Even a small number of humans could kill off all the large mammals, if they were so inclined. And it's the only explanation which can span two continents.
No, you'd expect them to start on the 'smaller tasty mammals'
When's the last time you tried throwing a spear at a small animal?
Not only do smaller animals present smaller targets, but they also tend to be capable of much faster movement (or acceleration, more specifically). The limited accuracy and relatively slow velocity of a projectile like a spear or dart (even with an atlatl) makes such a tool nearly useless in the hunting of small animals. There is ample time for a little critter to move out of the way of such a slow-moving projectile.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Umm... there IS evidence of Noah's flood. And georeactors are common. Admittedly, they may have some crackpot ideas, but they are right to point out that certain items of evidence don't line up with current theory.
In that sense, I wish more slashdotters would listen to creation theorists, and tinfoil hatters more often, because to drown them out implies a blind faith in scientists and textbooks, a rational absurdity.
Remember that quote that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine? To silence evidence that conflicts with current theory is a a no-brainer, as in, it is a negation of the brain God gave you.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
humanity was born in the ice ages of the Pleistocene we've never experienced a planet as warm as the dinosaurs... Humans will survive a warmer earth I have no doubt, but the potential for massive disruption to the food supply is there and if that happens there's going to be some really ugly war that humanity might not survive. The reason to be scared of global warming is because of those changing fertile zones, humanity goes batshit crazy when starvation is eminent.
Humanity has experienced the whole gamut of climates, from hot deserts to frozen Arctic lands. Civilization is very tenuous at those northern fringes (see the Vikings who ended up having to abandon their colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland).
Guess you haven't thought about the fact that there are vast tracts of land in northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia that will become viable farmland if the growing season gets a little longer. If the predictions of global warming alarmists come to pass (and so far they have not), I'll be concerned about inundation of coastal cities; but given the large net increase in viable farmland, there should be no concerns about starvation. Global warming is much more likely to exacerbate the obesity epidemic.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Aside from that, I pulled up the links from a google search to cherry-pick the items that I was looking for. These things have all appeared in reputable journals; but a) people who espouse popular theories odon't cite; b) those who do cite while espousing popular theories put their articles behind paywalls.
Face it, if you know about a journal article, and want to easily give references here on the web, you're going to have to learn to look at papers with theories you consider nutty.
Either that, or you're going to have to come up with a service tthat reads journal articles, references them, and summarizes them with all the relevant information, and then pays for itself with google ads.
Take your pick.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
If the Clovis people had killed them off, you wouldn't have had them going extinct.
If the Clovis people hunted their main food sources to extinction, I'd expect the demises of the beasts and the Clovis people to be indistinguishable in the geologic record.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I prefer these handy, easy-to-understand charts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And yes, a little warmer would be more 'normal', but I expect we'll have another ice age first.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Because the money has run out, and now they're eating US.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Good points, Plate tectonics provides a better explanation for Cenozoic Era paleoclimates than just the carbon cycle. The Eocene-Oligocene change has to do with Antarctica drifting over the south pole and icing up. This disrupted ocean circulation and was caused by the breakup of Gondwanaland and the beginning of the circumpolar currents in the Southern Hemisphere. The climate cooled even more in the Miocene and Pliocene because the northern continents surrounded the Arctic and restricted warming sea water from the North Pole. The orbital fluctuations were made critical by the ocean circulation, not the carbon cycle. The carbon cycle is a response to ocean productivity, most carbon fuels are marine in origin. That was very much affected by the land bridges connecting the Americas and Asia, even though the Atlantic opened up. Diverting the Gulf Stream into North Europe, rather than it going from Africa across the Gulf of Mexico and into the Eastern Pacific as it did in Eocene time, would cause greater snow in Northern Europe and Canada that would not melt from season to season and lead to continental glaciation.
As for the cause of the Mass Extinction, the numbers of human in the Americas, only a few thousands, a not enough to explain the collapse of the megafauna, even if people were successful preditors, It is more likely that climate instability and the collapse of food stocks for specialized animals was the real cause. The animals could not adapt, the changes were too fast, happening in decades rather than millenia, and the spieces went extinct.
For our continued existence as megafauna, defined as needing expensive food to survive, it is climate instability that poses the greater risk than ice ages or not. We could have clearly survived in an Eocene climate and we did fine in a Pleistocene one, but to have Eocene in the next 30 years and Pleistocene in the following 30 would be very bad for us.
I'll listen to a creation theorist when said creation theorist comes up with a falsifiable theory. Alternatively, falsify evolution theory, and by "falsify" I don't mean make up this and claim there's insufficient evidence for that. Claiming "God did it" is crippling to scientific inquiry, and science has a far better record in helping people achieve a high quality of life and become humane than religion does. This is true regardless of whether God did "it" or not.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Umm... there IS evidence of Noah's flood. And georeactors are common.
There's evidence of some extremely large floods in early human history, there's no evidence of a world wide flood resembling the biblical account.
And georeactors are one thing, but talking about an 'ancient nuclear reactor' implies that humans BUILT the devices, and they had some understanding of atomic physics.
Admittedly, they may have some crackpot ideas, but they are right to point out that certain items of evidence don't line up with current theory.
In that sense, I wish more slashdotters would listen to creation theorists, and tinfoil hatters more often, because to drown them out implies a blind faith in scientists and textbooks, a rational absurdity.
Remember that quote that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine? To silence evidence that conflicts with current theory is a a no-brainer, as in, it is a negation of the brain God gave you.
There's a reason to discount them, it's because they're wrong, very wrong.
If you start out to prove that the bible is literally true, or that ancient humans had what we'd consider to be advanced technology, you're very quickly presented with a scenario where you either have to lie or be completely delusional because the evidence is weighted so heavily against you.
Think of it like asking the mentally ill homeless person raving about microchips in his head about the NSA. He surely will have a lot to say and may even know some facts that you don't, but there's no way you're going to walk away from that conversation with a clearer picture of reality.
I stole this Sig
My personal theory is that the pleistocene has been so cold because of the historically (4 billion years) high oxygen levels and the significant amount of historical carbon that has been sequestered underground.
Humans are changing that, we're sucking all the sequestered carbon out and putting it into the atmosphere where it hasn't been since the dinosaurs. Before all the science deniers reply....
I wasn't aware that personal theory counts as science