Climate helped wipe out large mammals

[LibLabUK]

Climate - not early human hunters - may have caused the crash in bison populations and the extinction of other big mammals at the end of the last ice age, suggests a new study.

An analysis of the genetic diversity of bison shows that the decline in Beringia - the prehistoric land mass joining Alaska and Siberia - began 37,000 years ago, more than 20,000 years before large human populations reached the area.

And the bison were lucky they did not go extinct as the ice sheets melted about 10,000 years ago, unlike other ice-age megafauna such as sabre-toothed cats.

It is a “big surprise" that the decline began long before people arrived, says Alan Cooper at Oxford University, a member of the international research team. He had thought early North Americans wiped out the megafauna, much like human settlers are believed to have devastated the flightless moa of New Zealand.

"Humans may have killed the last surviving members of these groups," he told New Scientist, but that was only because climate change had turned the large mammals into "dead men walking".

Source:New Scientist

[whistle]

1. Are you suggesting that something similar is happening with regard to...

...the republican and democratic parties. The political ice age is beginning with global warming, peak oil, over population and the huge 3 ton SUVs rolling over the American landscape getting 12 to 15 mpg?

[YankeyMCC]

2. But

Hasn't the date for the earliest arrival of humans recently been pushed way back? Like around 50,000 years ago.