For decades researchers have tried to pinpoint the cause of the massive loss of large-bodied Ice Age mammals, megafauna, about 10,000 years ago. The debate has largely focused on whether a particular mechanism was evident: was it humans and hunting? Climate and environmental change? An extraterrestrial impact? Or were the animals eliminated by a a hyperdisease, a disease that so impacted the population numbers there was no possibility of recovery.
But a new study detailing the history of six large herbivores—the woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, caribou, bison and muskox—shows that both climate change and humans were to blame for the extinction or near extinction of large-mammal populations within the last 10,000 years. Duane Froese, a researcher in the University of Alberta’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was a contributor to the international study led by scientists at the University of Copenhagen. Froese describes the research as a massive effort where nearly 3,000 specimens of ice-age mammals were radiocarbon dated, and mitochondrial DNA sequences from ancient fossil specimens were analyzed. These data were the used to understand the responses of different ice-age megafauna to the pressures of early hunters and climate change.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Both humans and climate doomed ice age mammals | ScienceBlog.com
