Talk:New World Pleistocene extinctions

Should this be a separate Article?

The major Extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene were world-wide in nature (just ask many types of local megafauna in Eurasia). Shouldn't a single article explain this? Nonprof. Frinkus (talk · contribs) 04:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• This article is already quite long, and the literature for Eurasian Pleistocene extinctions is quite different. The time frame for the extinction events is different between the Eurasian and these Novo Orbo ones. Note the differences between Irvingtonian and Rancholabrean faunal stages for North America versus Calabrian, Sicilian and Tyrrhenian for Europe, and the Okehuan, Putikian and Hawera for New Zealand. --Bejnar 05:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Homo Sapiens were the major factor in Extinctions

It seems to be a common myth that keeps perpetuating that it was climate change (ask the megafauna that survived a few 1000 years after Younger Dryas only to be cleaned up my humans) or a hyperdisease (which to this day leaves no evidence) when scientific evidence clearly shows Homo sapiens were not just a cause, but the cause. Even dwarfing can be triggered by humans (the bigger they are, the easier they are to catch). I have good evidence, such as an example of a clear statement of this fact way back in 1999 by John Alroy, a research biologist with the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at Santa Barbara, and I have information from other researchers as well. Nonprof. Frinkus (talk · contribs) 05:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

• While I agree with you that homo sapiens is the most likely major cause of large animal extinctions in North America, the evidence for the cause of the extinction of smaller creatures in North America is less compelling, and the evidence in Europe is very mixed. --Bejnar 05:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The article has some holes regarding this argument. First of all, it's by no means clear that Clovis culture were first humans in North America. In fact, it seems increasingly unlikely. Second, the entire "ecologically naive" argument is dubious. European megafauna co-existed with humans for something like 200 000 years - humans being Neandertals who did hunt big game. Hence, they had plenty of time to adopt to being prey to humans. It seems unlikely that Cro-Magnon - who, by contrast, seldom hunted big game - would have driven large animals like mammoths to extinction by direct hunting, given their very low population densities (much lower than in Africa). Further, megafauna disappeared from places where humans had even lower population densities, such Siberia. And to continue this argument, I'm not all that sure how "ecologically savvy" megafauna of Africa and Asia today are: elephants and rhinos don't seem to be that afraid of humans. --Mikoyan21 (talk) 00:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and regarding dwarfing: that is indeed true, but only regards to hunting by firearms or other extremely advanced hunting technologies. The "dwarving" phenomenon has been largely observed only in 20th Century. It seems extremely unlikely that Neolithic hunters would target the largest, most aggressive specimens.--Mikoyan21 (talk) 00:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Survival

While this article focuses on extinctions, can you please point me to a topic that explains how the various species survived the various ice ages? Kendirangu 06:06, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Second order predation

The section on second order predation is perhaps disproportionate. It appears to come from Elin Whitney-Smith's PhD (2001), which as far as I know has not been published in additional articles. There was a related effect, published by Janzen in 1984 suggesting carnivores (which may not have been hunted by humans) had decreased food available, and as a result finished off the last herbivores which humans had already depleted. Otherwise, I don't know of any research on second order predation effects. Perhaps we should limit the discussion in that section per undue weight. Thoughts? --TeaDrinker 23:46, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

It is, but I don't want to edit this article right now because of the proposed merge. If I do merge it into Pleistocene megafauna I would condense out much of the material. The way, the truth, and the light 23:48, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

You're right that we should probably get the broad organization straightened out before hammering out some specifics. (And thanks for all the work!) --TeaDrinker 00:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The suggested links

A CV is a self descriptive document. How can that be used as reliable evidence. I think we should cite the papers written by the respective author insted. The same goes for e-mail addresses. Wikipedia is not immune to spambots Kendirangu 06:56, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Quite so; I have removed them. --TeaDrinker 07:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)