Summary and Annotated Bibliography

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University of California, Los Angeles *

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70B

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Anthropology

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Apr 3, 2024

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pdf

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Cluster Week 4: Question and Hypothesis – 1. What are the author(s) asking and what is their prediction of the answer? Why is this particular question important to the field at large? Did the authors find something new? Are they using a new technique? Are they verifying a previous study? The question being asked was why did most of North America’s Pleistocene mammals go extinct about 12,000 radiocarbon years ago. This question was important to the field at large because it provides data to support the mass extinction and explains a part of history scientifically. The authors are using a new technique by creating two situations and scenarios to predict whether or now radiocarbon had something to do with it. 2. Tests – How did the author(s) go about trying to answer the question? Were the methods new or had they been used before? Did they use a model or collect empirical data? The authors decided to conduct two different experiments where they changed how much radiocarbon was and used a new method that was able to decide if the research done before was accurate or not. They collected empirical data in order to test their question and went about their experiment from there. 3. Figures – What figures are included in the paper? What do they show? Explain them generally in words. Some various graphs and t-charts include the tests from the experiment that included two different variables. The figures are based on the genera that were collected from data about the number of mammals based on the time of year. 4. Conclusion – What answer did the author(s) come up with to their original question? Did it match their predictions? The authors concluded that the late Pleistocene extinctions of North American mammals led to the loss of 35 genera of large mammals, which are likely to have occurred as a synchronous event within a geologically short period. They concluded that this synchronous extinction event likely took place between 12,000 and 10,000 radiocarbon years B.P. The passage highlights that the evidence supports a rapid and catastrophic event as the cause of these extinctions. However, it also emphasizes the challenges of precisely interpreting the causes due to the incomplete fossil record and the uncertainty surrounding the dating of certain genera. 5. Further Tests – What, if any, further questions or tests did the author(s) offer to further the field? They suggested finding the loss of records in order to create a more accurate representation of the question being asked.

6. Mainstream Article – Was it successful in accurately getting across the importance of the research to a broader audience? What was the mainstream article missing from the original article? Did the mainstream article mislead about some aspect(s) of the scientific It was successful in getting its point across although it was confusing on the first read because some of the keywords/concepts weren't given a definition. If anything it provided additional information to what the mainstream article provided, and it never misled any information. Annotated Bibliography 1. Find at least 3 papers that your paper referenced (“References” or “Cited References” in Web of Science). Give full citations for these and briefly summarize them (i.e., in a paragraph or two), noting how they were used in your paper (e.g., Were they used for methods? To back up a point? etc.) MacPhee RDE (1999) Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences (Kluwer/Plenum, New York). "Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences" is a comprehensive exploration of recent extinctions in Earth's history, focusing on the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. The book delves into the various factors driving these extinctions, with a particular emphasis on human activities, climate change, habitat destruction, and invasive species. Through insightful case studies, it reveals the complex interplay of these factors and their environmental contexts. This was used in the article in order to provide context on Pleistocene times and also proposes answers to verify how extinctions occurred. Barnosky AD, Koch PL, Feranec RS, Wing SL, Shabel AB (2004) “Assessing the causes of late Pleistocene extinctions on the continents.” Science 306:70 –75. The text discusses the investigation of the causes behind the late Pleistocene extinctions that occurred on various continents. Researchers have been trying to pinpoint the factors responsible for the disappearance of numerous large mammals during this period. The text highlights that while overhunting by early human populations has long been considered a leading cause, other factors like climate change and ecological disruption may also have played significant roles. The paper addresses the causes of later extinctions throughout different continents which explains North America's extinction. It also appeared in the other article as providing evidence to this article. Grayson DK, Meltzer DJ (2003) “A requiem for North American overkill.” J Archaeol Sci 30:585–593. This is incorporated into the article by explaining why there was a great number of mass extinctions in North America, this article was also used to justify the author's initial questions. The text presents a critical reevaluation of the popular theory of overhunting by early humans as the primary cause of late Pleistocene extinctions in North America. While overkill has been a dominant hypothesis, the text argues that it doesn't fully account for the complexity and diversity of factors involved in the extinctions. Instead, the authors propose that a combination of factors,

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