Did humans cause the mass extinction of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene period?

Faith and Surovell hypothesize a statistical analysis will uncover whether a temporally spread out extinction or a quick extinction killed North America’s Pleistocene mammals, a debate that has split paleontologists and archaeologists into two diametrically opposed sides for years. (Faith and Surovell, 2009). The debate on the extinction method has been heated due to the absence of fossil records of 19 of the 35 genera (Faith and Surovell, 2009). Faith and Surovell test whether finding only 16 genera in the fossil record in the terminal timeframe (between 12,000 and 10,000 radiocarbon years ago or between about 11,800 - 9,400 B.C.) is a result of a sampling error, or an extinction happening over a long period of time (Faith and Surovell, 2009).

“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs” is written by Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and zoology at Harvard. This essay is one of more than a hundred articles on evolution, zoology, and paleontology published by Gould in national magazines and journals. It tells about scientific proposals for the extinction of dinosaurs – a confusing but an exciting problem that humanity tries to solve. By analyzing and describing each of the claims for the reptiles’ demise – sex, drugs, and disasters – Gould differentiates bad science from good science and explains what makes some theories silly speculations, while the other, a testable hypothesis.

Megafaunal extinction is a reference to how large animals such as the woolly mammoth became extinct, especially in North America. This extinction had an effect on Paleolithic cultures at the time, because some were extremely affected by it. In fact, the Clovis culture around North America became extinct with the animals. This is important, as it showed that after the extinction, the people didn't die out, but instead they spread out, with groups hunting smaller animals or bison instead of mammoths. It helped evolve Native American cultures, as after the megafaunal phase, some of the cultures became farmers or developers of cities. (Social and

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 65 million years and thankfully for the human race, they became extinct. Ultimately, only a major catastrophe could completely wipe out an entire species, let alone an entity of dinosaurs and the debacle on the causes of dinosaur extinction have flooded the minds of paleontologists for centuries. Geologist and zoologist Stephen Jay Gould published “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs,” to compare scientific and speculative causes of dinosaur decimation. Personally, I found this passage very informational and enjoyed reading it. Gould provides three theories that capture the reader’s curiosity, allowing room for pondering in one’s mind.

There were two world altering centers of invention: the Middle East and central Mexico. All the inventions in the Middle East traveled all over Africa and Eurasia but the Americas had to do everything on their own. The America’s excelled mostly in agriculture and nearly half the grown today were developed in America. The Indians were very good at exploiting the land. Instead of just taking the land how it was they would shape it to what the needed primarily by burning it. When the Indians were gone all the areas they had made into savannahs became forest. A growing number of researchers believe that Indians had a large impact on the environment around them especially the jungle. Many people believe that the Amazon rainforest is an area totally untouched by man when in fact it is believed to have been either directly or indirectly created by human. Indians were also the keystone species of their environment and when they were gone it caused a huge shift in the ecological system. The population of many animals exploded,

In the “Paleo Period”, the first humans survived on what the land provided. “Louisiana’s climate was cooler and drier, with vast grasslands, with the only large forests by the river.” (The

1. Why do we say that Columbus discovered America when there were already one hundred million people here?

Significant changes occurred in the North American landscape as a result of European settlers. Many of these changes were due to the fundamental differences in which the land was viewed, and thereby treated, by the Native Americans versus the incoming European settlers. Although both groups made significant impacts on their surroundings, the novel Changes in the Land argues that the actions of those inhabiting the English colonies caused much more dramatic and long-lasting alterations. The author of Changes in the Land, William Cronon, attempted to dispel the myth of the first English settlers stumbling upon “virgin land.”

The reading passage proposes three theories which support the idea that a dinosaur which is called edmontosaurus survived in the winter by migrating to the south, the more hospitable region than the extremely cold in the North Slope. However, the professor in the listening respectively contradicts each theory in the reading passage by using strong evidence as support.

The same text states, “ Another site discovered by Archeologists in the mid 1920s in Folsom, New Mexico, showed evidence of human hunters that trapped and killed ice age bison.” The Indians ability to hunt an animal as large as Ice Age bison shows that the Paleo- Indians were competent.

As geologic time goes, all the dinosaurs living on earth suddenly disappeared. How did these dominated and gigantic creatures really die? Was it a slow extinction through natural causes, or did it happen suddenly? These questions give rise to many different beliefs on how the dinosaurs disappeared over sixty-five million years ago. Something happened sixty-five million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period that was so devastating that it altered the course of life on earth. Extinction is easily defined: the birth rate fails to keep up with the death rate. However, the definition does not answer the question about the nature or causes of extinction. Since so many

“The appearance of Homo sapiens and the disappearance of various species of large mammals” –these words, I believe, demonstrate the theme of Paul S. Martin’s famed hypothesis. Martin’s theory, also known as the Overkill hypothesis, considers that humans were the sole contributors to the Late Quaternary extinction of megafauna that happened in the last 50,000 years in various continents, mainly in the Americas and Australia. According to Martin, as humans started colonizing new areas of the world, they introduced predators, competitors and disease vectors. Due to such introductions, the megafauna faced extinctions as they were hunted for food and clothing, caught diseases brought on by the humans and new species such as Pacific Rats, and faced food shortages. Martin went onto say that humans not only caused extinction of large mammals but they also wiped out various smaller mammals, along with a large quantity of birds, particularly of the terrestrial type. He alleged that over 200 species of vertebrates, ranging from ones that were enormous in size and weight (weighing up to 22,000 lbs.) to extremely small mouse-sized vertebrates, are on the list of animals that have undergone extinction because of human arrival and involvement.

The debate over what happened to the dinosaurs have been one of the most controversial research topics in history. One minute, the earth was blooming with countless trees and a healthy environment, then, in the period of seconds, all life on earth was wiped out, creating a mass extinction across the globe (Bond, 2017). Discovering what ended the cretaceous period has been a major priority in the scientific world, however, with enough modern day research, scientists have nailed the extinction of the Dinosaurs down to two major theories; the asteroid impact theory, and the volcanic eruption theory, both being extremely alike.

As far as extinctions of the past go, dinosaurs are the best known example of worldwide devastation of a single species. The origin of the dinosaur destruction that marks the end of the Cretaceous era is a scientific enigma. Although scientists are uncertain of the exact cause of this mass extinction, according to columnist Ker Than in a 2013 issue of National Geographic, there are just a few viable hypotheses. One point scientists are sure on, is that the reason for this mass extinction event is a natural

Imagine yourself blindly stumbling through the maze-like undergrowth of a prehistoric jungle. Just as break through the leaves into the light, a massive figure materializes before your eyes. You watch in horror as this creature rises to be the height of a two-story building and only one thought goes through your mind: dinosaur. However, something seems off about this T-rex; instead of rows of reptile-like scales, in their place are brightly colored feathers. How could this image be so different? Scientific knowledge is limited by technology and the observations it produces. As technology evolves, so do previous scientific observations. One of the most notable examples of this evolution of scientific observation are the dinosaurs. Since their discovery in the 1800’s, dinosaurs have helped make the prehistoric era one of the most popular periods of Earth’s history, for science and society alike. However, while new scientific observations challenge the previously held beliefs on “dinosaurs,” society and the media continue to base their interpretations of prehistoric creatures on the initial observations made centuries ago. Despite the scientific processes that went into producing the image of the dinosaur, there is no doubt that speculation and fantasy contributed to the results. Even though we know that the concept of the dinosaur isn’t an accurate depiction of the physical and social characteristics of prehistoric creatures, it shouldn’t be discarded as another piece of