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Climate and Humans in Megafauna Extinction

The document summarizes three explanations for the extinction of Australian megafauna around 45,000 years ago. It states that while hunting and fire agriculture played a role, climate change also destabilized the ecosystem at that time, making it vulnerable. When humans arrived soon after, they further pushed the fragile system towards extinction through their combined impacts on the large animals. The co-occurrence of climate change and human impacts made it difficult for species to survive.

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Madame Moseille
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67 views2 pages

Climate and Humans in Megafauna Extinction

The document summarizes three explanations for the extinction of Australian megafauna around 45,000 years ago. It states that while hunting and fire agriculture played a role, climate change also destabilized the ecosystem at that time, making it vulnerable. When humans arrived soon after, they further pushed the fragile system towards extinction through their combined impacts on the large animals. The co-occurrence of climate change and human impacts made it difficult for species to survive.

Uploaded by

Madame Moseille
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A third explanation agrees that hunting and fire agriculture played a

significant role in the extinction, but emphasises that we can’t


completely ignore the role of climate. The climate changes that beset
Australia about 45,000 years ago destabilised the ecosystem and made it
particularly vulnerable. Under normal circumstances the system would
probably have recuperated, as had happened many times previously.
However, humans appeared on the stage at just this critical juncture and
pushed the brittle ecosystem into the abyss. The combination of climate
change and human hunting is particularly devastating for large animals,
since it attacks them from different angles. It is hard to find a good
survival strategy that will work simultaneously against multiple threats.
Without further evidence, there’s no way of deciding between the
three scenarios. But there are certainly good reasons to believe that if
Homo sapiens had never gone Down Under, it would still be home to
marsupial lions, diprotodons and giant kangaroos.

The End of Sloth


The extinction of the Australian megafauna was probably the first
significant mark Homo sapiens left on our planet. It was followed by an
even larger ecological disaster, this time in America. Homo sapiens was
the first and only human species to reach the western hemisphere
landmass, arriving about 16,000 years ago, that is in or around 14,000
BC . The first Americans arrived on foot, which they could do because, at
the time, sea levels were low enough that a land bridge connected
northeastern
Siberia with north-western Alaska. Not that it was easy – the
journey was an arduous one, perhaps harder than the sea passage to
Australia. To make the crossing, Sapiens first had to learn how to
withstand the extreme Arctic conditions of northern Siberia, an area on
which the sun never shines in winter, and where temperatures can drop
to minus fifty degrees Celsius.

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