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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."
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.
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.
To be fair, humans were able to migrate to the Americas because of a shift in the climate, so it is plausible that both effects had the same cause rather then one causing the other.
Waiting for someone with a four digit UID to reply "you must be new here"
I'm on it!
You must be new here.
I very stupidly just Googled "giant beaver" at work.
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.
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.