Talk:Late Pleistocene extinctions

This is a surprisingly terrible article that goes out of its way to argue for the Overkill hypothesis, when that hypothesis has its own article. It's crap and definitely needs expert attention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.235.139.169 (talk) 08:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

This is not an extinction event. I propose that this thread be renamed to "Quaternary extinction" to be more scientific. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.37.247 (talk) 02:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with the renaming. The word event can still be used within the article when used by a particular source. On another matter you said here that Holocene extinctions were not over a short timescale compared to the mass extinction events. Many extinctions over a period of 10s to a few thousand years is fairly quick. According to the article the Permo-Triassic extinction event took 100,000 years for plants to fully respond. On a geological timescale of order 100 million years this can still be described as an event. Polargeo (talk) 07:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but several of the events occurred within a few generations due to the combined effects of the root stimuli and nuclear winter. When the affects of nuclear winter are added, the timeframe is reduced considerably. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.37.247 (talk) 20:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Remember NPOV...

There seems to be a lot of edits recently making "arguments against" various hypotheses. Admittedly, I'm not up-to-date on the latest scientific literature, so hopefully someone's keeping an eye on this. We need to be sure that neither side (for or against the Overkill hypothesis) is given undue weight and the article meets WP:NPOV. I have noticed a few weasel words in the article, so it clearly needs review by an expert. –Visionholder (talk) 22:07, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily say I'm "up-to-date," but I've read some of the relevant literature, and I'm quite surprised that this article is so heavily slanted towards overkill when the scholarly consensus these days seems to weigh in the opposite direction. This passage, for example: "However, Hunn's comments are in reference to a hunter-prey equilibrium state reached after thousands of years of coexistence, and are not relevant to hunters newly arrived on a virgin land mass full of easily taken big game. The well-established practice of industrial-scale moa butchering by the early Maori, involving enormous wastage of less choice portions of the meat, indicates that these arguments are incorrect." Regardless of overkill's correctness or support among scholars, this is a ridiculously POV and credulous passage. "virgin land," really? Let's not use loaded language in what is supposed to be an encyclopedic article, please.75.92.198.15 (talk) 01:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The passage is not really scientific, and the text is probably too much pro "hunting hypothesis". In fact a great proportion of scientists in the field argue against hunting as the main reason, but in my opinion there is not a overweight in the direction of climate hypothesis. I can try to fix some very unscientific statements, but I am afraid I am also not a perfect person to do that, since a am also a supporter of the hunting hypothesis. ...but whom would you accuse, if there was a murder between 8 and 10 pm in one house, a second one between 1 and 3 am in another house and third one arround 5 in a park in the moring. And some people saw one person always with a knife appearing at these places arround the time of the kills? ....Cheers, --Altaileopard (talk) 21:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

a few remarks on bison, and human population pressure

my first remark is that it is contained several times in the article that a seperation of the bison of 240Ka left it naive. wich is unsourced. also i think it is not true. since firstly evolutionairy adaptions dont necessarilly disappear without trace in such a short period (morphologically they tend to do not). and secondly it is unclear if this adaption would have a possible positive effect on the species survivability in the abscence of humans, it may eg. have helped against predation through shortfaced bear (roughly similar size and looks), or canines( that share a roughly similar hunting method with humans). so i would like to see it sourced and provided with examples. my other remark is that even very small numbers of eg. seal hunters (like 1 or a few crews so under 100 individuals) managed to extinguish complete colonies of sea-mammals in mere years and species in at most decades. since that was not uncommonly done by clubbing or spearing it also shows no advanced technology's are needed for it.24.132.171.225 (talk) 04:34, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

later in article i find this: "Such a disease needs to be capable of killing of three species of bison while leaving a third very closely related species unaffected." wich in my opinion renders the whole bison argument very moot. it shows we actually have to do with either an adapted species, the most adaptable species, or a species that was kept in a certain regard (not necessarily reference) by humans, a thing btw wich is strongly suggested by the dependency of plains cultures of the bison. fascinatingly i think evidence for this could be found. one thing that would eg. be telling is if the other bison species migrated over considerably smaller distances, that could be habitually covered by humans. other reasons for preferential predation by humans could be more meat per kill, a more agressive species (that would simply put provide a hunter with bigger praise, or even result in considerable effort to hunt the animal for safety reasons). there is a sheer endless list of such factors, eg. a strong family bond like in elephants that stay with the dead would be lethal for any animal intensively hunted, yet more usefull or less adapted to humans then elephants, etc.24.132.171.225 (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

It's difficult to see the logic in the assertion in the article that the relative abundance of bison in the late Pleistocene makes the history of resilience of the megafauna to climate change irrelevant. There are often distinct faunal components to particular geological stages - eg the hippopotamus present in the 5e interglacial in Britain. Climate change in the late Pleistocene is associated with changes in the proportions and geographical distribution of species, whether the proportions are novel or not. (See for example, E Vrba, Palaeoclimate and Evolution) - a similar pattern is observed with vegetation. What is strikingly new with the arrival of modern humans is that many more of the displaced species, instead of surviving in refugial populations and recolonising at a later date, are permanently gone. Orbitalforam (talk) 10:33, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Not sure why this isn't clear. Yes, there are distinct faunal components during particular geological stages; the entire concept of land mammal ages, for example, is built on this fact. But it's reasonable and logical to assert that changing mammalian faunal composition will result in altered responses by the mammals in question to altered ecological circumstances. Bighorn sheep in the deserts of western North America, for example, have responses to changes in both weather and climate that can be assessed and quantified. Add burros to the landscape, and those responses will be somewhat different due to increased competition for resources. Add cattle, and responses will change still further. And such differences can be substantial; bighorns left to themselves may thrive in the deserts, but when burros are added, the burros have to be culled in order to maintain native wildlife, else the community would collapse. But relative abundance is critical in these instances; where a few burros or cattle might not make a big difference, large numbers of them would. In a like manner, the addition of abundant numbers of bison at the end of the Pleistocene (and not before according to the available data) constituted a major change in mammalian faunal composition that likely contributed to increased competition for available resources. Ecosystems in place for over a million years (horses, camels, mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, etc. and their attendant carnivoran predators) were thus faced with a dramatic new component. This abundant new addition was competing for many of the same resources; during periods of climate change, when these resources were varying in their abundance and distribution, such competition would have been enhanced. Since bison were not just abundant but also widespread across the continent during this time, this competition would have been continent-wide. (In contrast, human-megafaunal sites are far more scarce; in southern California and southern Nevada, for example, out of dozens of late Pleistocene mammalian fossil localities, there are zero kill sites or butchery sites or other indications that humans and Pleistocene megafauna interacted.) Given this difference, it is unreasonable to argue that the past resilience of the megafauna to climate change was pertinent to the end-Pleistocene event. The composition of the megafauna was altered, dramatically, and so the success of the animals during earlier periods of change is no longer relevant.170.164.50.204 (talk) 00:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Another puzzle about the bison would seem to be that it survived not on isolated islands, in inaccessible mountains or dense forests, but on the wide open plains where it would have been easy to hunt. Surely an obvious conclusion would be that the bison provided such a valuable source of food and fur that it was deliberately allowed to survive?Walshie79 (talk) 23:32, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

So, the Clovis were so intelligent to decide to kill until the last one any mammuth/mastodon/ancient bison, but leave alive the plain bison? And eliminate atleast 3 species of Pronghorn and all the 5 species of horses.. This is scientifically atleast as the Atlantis existence, to my mind. And definitively not- proof.

more rainfall

The megafauna demise in Siberia appeared to have coincided with dramatic increase in rainfall at the Preboreal. The youngest fossils are about 9300 carbon years BP ~ 11,000 calendar years. The mammoth steppe changed into marshes and swamps, which was totally unsuitable for mammoths etc. Islands like Wrangel island tend to have their own micro climate, reason why the mammoths could have survived for a longer periodThere is no evidence of human occupation at the majority of the last refugia (ic Taimyr peninsula ). Obviously this is in favor of the climate change hypothesis. I intend to add that shortly.

That was for sure a big problem for the marsupial lion in Australia and the giant ground sloth in Patagonia... --Altaileopard (talk) 21:05, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Stilostomella extinction

This major event of oceanic foraminifera extinction in the mid pleistocene is at least as dramatic as the mammal extinctions, however totally unknown to wikipedia. I wonder if this warrants a new seperate article or another chapter here. Thoughts? http://jfr.geoscienceworld.org/content/32/3/274.abstract

AndrePooh (talk) 12:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

About the title "Quaternary extinction event"

Why is this article entitled "Quaternary extinction event"? Search on google scholar yields only 10 (sic!) results; of those, 5 actually uses the phrase "late Quaternary extinction event", and 1 other "end-Quaternary extinction event". But only 3 from those 10 clearly use this phrase to refer to the subject of this article (the wave of extinctions), while the rest refers to some specific "event" that was a part of the wave.

• "Quaternary extinction event" - 10 scholar hits
• "Quaternary extinction events" - 10 scholar hits
• "Pleistocene-Holocene extinctions" - 117 scholar hits.
• "Quaternary extinction" - 370
  • "late Quaternary extinction" - 283
• "Holocene extinctions" - 466 <- a duplicate Wikipedia article
• "Quaternary extinctions" - 2140 scholar hits
  • "late Quaternary extinctions" - 417

--Kubanczyk (talk) 13:49, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Merge with Holocene extinction

There are two articles on the same topic. Holocene extinction — Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.159.62.2 (talk) 19:50, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Still human predation absurdity...

This article is still filled with the 'TRUTHFUL' hypothesis, the human over-predation/kill. Wow. No better expert here, to remove the utter nonsense present in this one, one of the most silly WP articles?

Then, let's give some hints:

1-What was the only megafauna surely killed 'en masse' in USA?

The bison, right? The only one still alive, i'd say.

2-Why the ASIAN ELEPHANT is still alive, while the northern cousin, the mammouth, was gone thousands years ago? Really, someone is telling that humans weren't capable to kill asian elephants, while they were more than enough to chase and kill any mammouth in the northern emisphere? Really, someone 'advocate' of the overkill can display HOW in a land around 50,000,000 square km (Europe, URSS, USA) a very few hunters killed any proboscidates (mammouth, mastodon, ancient elephants)? While the indian/asian counterparts were 'spared' by humans?

3- the question about the 'african megafauna was evolved with men, so they were adapted to fight them'. Oh, yes. Then, mammouth were surely an honey bottle, after all they had just to survive to smilodon and american lions, or the ancient dire wolves.

4- humans killing the apex predator. Ah-ah-ah. Why they had should do this? Why they could do that? Are you aware, that even in the 'modern times', humans still had not killed stuff like Kodiak, Polar, Grizzly, Cougar and Jaguar, among the others? Why they could have wiped-out the prehistoric beasts, then? modern lions, wolves and bears are dangerous enough to be chased with modern weapons! Do not forget, that when europeans arrived, the american natives were AFRAID to enter in the woods, because the grizzly were too dangerous (see californian bear).

OF course, the Clovis, being equipped with laser swords and machine-guns, titanium body armour and GPS, should have not been afraid, right?

Excuse me for the hirony, but this article needs DEFINITIVELY a very good review.

Ps the australian extintion was not necessarly related with the US mass extinction. Total different situation, timing ecc.

Ps 2 madagascar saw Hepiornys still alive just hundreds years ago

Ps 3 This graphic is even more COMICAL, as it shows absolutely NEITHER EUROPE NOR ASIA! How can it be trusted, then? IT uses just the locations relatively favourable to the human caused extinction!!! Do you realize it? Just deleted TWO CONTINENTS!!! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ad/Extinctions_Africa_Austrailia_NAmerica_Madagascar.gif/300px-Extinctions_Africa_Austrailia_NAmerica_Madagascar.gif188.135.165.160 (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Greetings for the absurdity

Eurasian Pleistocene megafauna became extinct in roughly same time period despite having a much longer time to adapt to hunting pressure by humans. However, the extinction of the Eurasian megafauna can be viewed as a result of a different process than that of the American megafauna. This makes the theory less parsimonious since another mechanism is required. The latter case occurred after the sudden appearance of modern human hunters on a land mass they had never previously inhabited, while the former case was the culmination of the gradual northward movement of human hunters over thousands of years as their technology for enduring extreme cold and bringing down big game improved. Thus, while the hunting hypothesis does not necessarily predict the rough simultaneity of the north Eurasian and American megafaunal extinctions, this simultaneity cannot be regarded as evidence against it.

SO, when put in America it's good, while Mammouth in Europe weren't so stupid and needed 30,000 years of chase made by modern humans to be extinted? But someone is capable to understand how unbeliable is this paragraph? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.20.209.65 (talk) 02:11, 6 June 2015 (UTC)