Humans or climate change? Debate has raged for decades over which of these factors led to the extinction of the Ice Age megafauna which were once widespread on every continent except Antarctica.
But now a review article analysing existing research from over the years claims that the decline of megafauna can most probably be attributed to hunting by ancient humans.
The peer-reviewed review is published in the journal Cambridge Prisms: Extinction.
Megafauna are any animal – mammal, bird, reptile – weighing more than about 45kg, about the same as a grey wolf.
According to the fossil record, at least 161 species of large mammal were driven to extinction in the past 50,000 years.
This figure shows extinction of large mammals during the late Quaternary period (2.58 million years ago to today) related to body size. TOP: Global percentage of species that went extinct based on their size. BOTTOM: Break down by continent. The black numbers represent the total number of species that lived during this time. The red numbers show the number that went extinct. Credit: Aarhus University ECONOVO / Cambridge Prisms: Extinction
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2 thoughts on “Humans might be responsible for megafauna extinctions after all– cosmosmagazine.com”