Extinction Of Megafauna

Faith & Surovell offer hopes for further testing for biological and spatial histories of individual species and their migrations in relation to climate, ecology, and human permeation. They state this will uncover which if not all of the three main mechanisms: climate change, overkill, and extraterrestrial impact, caused the North American mammal extinctions in the late Pleistocene (Faith and Surovell, 2009).

Humans, Homo sapiens, migrated out of Africa in waves successively increasingly, crossing over to Eurasia before migrating into North America. The residing megafauna in North America would face Paleo-Indians. The genesis of the extinction of megafauna have has been hypothesized to credit to the introduction of modern humans. The sudden introduction of a hunting and big-game predator into regions with megafauna led to the overkill of large faunas. The overkill hypothesis alludes to the fact that extinction of large fauna species such as mammoth’s birds, etc. occurred after modern humans were introduced to the environment. To prove the overkill hypothesis was caused by human hunting large faunas, scientist Steve Wolverton evaluated the support

Stephen Gould’s essay “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs” completely agrees with Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb’s essay “Argument, Critical Thinking, and Rationality.” Gould’s essay deals with three theories for the extinction of the dinosaurs, two of which he argues are entirely invalid because they are not in accordance with the basic rules of argument laid out by Williams and Colomb in their essay. Gould also states that the third theory of dinosaur extinction, natural disaster, follows all the rules that Williams and Colomb espouse, and thus is a sound argument. Gould, Williams, and Colomb all state that the world has a problem with irrational arguments being shoved down people’s throats, and call for a

Other species of humans other than modern humans died out or were long bred out during the Pleistocene glaciers. During the end of the Late Pleistocene period was when the ice began to melt. It left land-ice bridges and humanity was able to spread to every continent on Earth, except for Antarctica.

The scale and pace of change is dramatic; for example, the extinction of species is occurring at around 100-fold pre-human rates4. The population sizes of vertebrate species have, on average, declined by half over the last 45 years5. More than 2.3 million km2 of primary forest has been felled since 20006. About

It's hard to say that humans haven't had an impact on their environment. Climate change, for example, has been a hot issue in the developed world ever since evidence proving the existence of human-caused global warming was unleashed leading to an onslaught of theories regarding its potential effect on our future. But what impact did humans have thousands of years ago when they were first colonizing North America?

In the two essays being discussed we learn that science has a vast range of definitions. Science is the effort to understand (or to understand better), the history of the natural world and how the natural world works with observable physical evidence as the base of understanding. Science is about how the hypothesis is developed and how well it is defended.

What are the 5 areas of independent domestication of plants (food production)? 10. What are the 4 areas that are possible sites of independent domestication of plants? 11. What 3-4 other areas received "founder packages" from Southwest Asia? CHAPTER 6: To Farm or Not to Farm 12. Why did hunter-gatherers evolve to become farmers in some areas and not in others? CHAPTER 7: How to Make an Almond 13. What does "plant domestication" mean? 14. Why is it important to understand when and why people became farmers? 15. What made some plants easier and more attractive to domesticate than others?

Megafaunal extinction: The extinction of large animal species such as mammoths and several species of horse and camels. No one knows what caused their extinction, whether it was from the excessive hunting or the Ice Age becoming a drier climate.

When sometimes around twelve thousand years ago climate started to become warmer and ice started to melt, it created a great allowance for ancient hunters to reach North America. Native Americans started to hunt in the wider areas and supply their community with a lot of meat. When people started to have more food, especially meat that caused a fast growth of population. For some unknown reasons, at the same time big mammals and mastodons started to disappear from the Earth. It is a possibility that the climate warming and lack of water sources played a role of the disappearance these big animals. Lack of water put animals in the situation when survival is not possible. The climate change also made a big adjustment in human’s ration and style of life. When people started to spread to North America, they discovered a lot of new food sources like small animals, fish, different kind of nuts and berries.

It is estimated that mammoths had the largest biome on the plant at an estimated 1 square kilometer per mammoth (Zimov, 2014). Herbivores of the time ranged from under 45 kilograms to well over 1000 kg, making for a wide range of diversity within the speciation (graph below). While many of these mammals were preyed upon by the carnivores, some were simply too large to be killed by single predators, causing them to be relatively immune to predation (Rodriguez, Alberdi, Azanza, Prado, 2006).

It is known that humans coexisted with Megafauna and there is evidence to back this up, Aborigines entered Australia from Indonesia around 60,000 years ago, which also had its own Megafauna. Previously it was said that humans caused the Megafauna to go extinct as the Aboriginals hunted the Megafauna over the following 15,000 years and created fires to destroy the habitats of them, it was said that the fires burnt down the trees and bushes to created a flat landscape to make it easier for the Aboriginals to live and hunt.

The Smilodon, commonly known as the Saber-toothed Tiger, was an intense carnivore in which was completely unrelated to today’s common Asian Tiger. Saber-toothed cats are predicted to have gone extinct towards the end of the Pleistocene era, 12,000 years ago. The exact cause of the extinction is unknown, however, scientists believe it to be due to the extinction of animals they preyed on, with the possibility of climate change. Smilodons lived in North and South America, generically in grasslands, shrubby areas, and pine forests that also supported the plant-eating lifestyle of animals that Saber-tooths so frequently preyed on. The fossils of this particular species was first discovered in 1842, in Brazil. Currently, the largest known collection

There have been five well known extinctions on this earth. The one most well known is the mass extinction that ended the dinosaurs. Mass extinction is often described as the elimination of a large number of species in a short period of time. Despite what many think, the elimination of species is almost commonplace at this point. The Earth is currently in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and it’s been caused by the human race.

Welcome to the age of an agricultural revolution as everyday biotechnology continues to bring innovation to human’s most basic needs – food. Food is essential to any living organism, providing energy for our production and nutrients for our protection. Without this fundamental element, life cannot exist. Our lack to produce our own energy, like plants, causes us to become dependent on others for survival. Humans existence is attributed only to the million years of evolution our food source underwent to sustain our survival. Changing the primary nature of our food source, whether it is plant or animal, directs mankind in a dangerous future if our food dependency is permanently hampered. Welcome to the age of an agricultural devolution