Extinctions, Scenarios, and Assumptions: Changes in Latest Pleistocene Large Herbivore Abundance and Distribution in Western North America

“Here is another explanation of the Pleistocene Extinctions, the catastrophic event in natural history wherein over  50-large species abruptly disappeared from North America 10-12,000-years ago. Humans and climate warming are usually blamed. This author says that we should consider that more was going on than new external pressures. There had been a new member of the animal community inside of the ecosystems: bison. Bison were recent immigrants to North America. He guesses that after bison spread rapidly across the continent, their increased grazing pressure (competition), in some combination with human hunting and warming, caused the extinctions.

 

The climate skepticism makes sense: Going far back in natural history there were dozens if not hundreds of ice ages without extinctions. Compared to an ice age when so much of the continent was under miles-thick glaciers, a warming climate would have increased food and areas that could support wildlife.

 

Many find it implausible that small numbers of primitive hunters could have killed enough animals so quickly, although humans have always caused extinctions whenever they appeared, from Australia, to Europe, to the Americas and most recently Oceana (North American bison were virtually wiped out in a few decades).

 

Understanding what actually caused ancient extinctions is essential to developing ways to avoid modern extinctions. That’s why this topic is so often discussed on this blog.”

 

NOTE: this paper below was originally published to Academia.edu in 2010. It was written by Eric Scott.

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