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New study on holocene mammal extinction

There is a new study out regarding the extinction of large mammals after the last ice age. Often this is cited as an example of how human hunters drove species to extinction by overhunting. The study is pretty conclusive in that this was not the cause, but rather that it was a combination of climate change and land use by humans (e.g. agriculture) that brought the demise of some of them, while in other cases human influence could be excluded and in some cases humans even helped mammals.

Humans and climate contributed to extinctions of large Ice Age mammals, new study finds

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During the period when these animals were declining, the human population was beginning its boom, and was spreading out across not only the large-bodied mammals' cold-climate habitats, but also across their warm-climate refuges, changing the landscape with agriculture and other activities
...
if humans had any impact on musk-ox populations, it may have been to help sustain them
....
Although it is clear that climate change drives the dynamics of these species, we, as humans, have to take some of the blame for what happened during this most-recent cycle. It seems that our ancestors were able to change the landscape so dramatically that these animals were effectively cut off from what they needed to survive, even when the human population was small

I guess I would've assumed as much :P Nice article.

Well, we're way overdue for an Ice age, so let's see if we survive that.

Nice article. It has some really interesting news in it.
Although as well many mammoths would of ended up getting stuck into tar pits.

This one is also really interesting: http://nimravid.wordpress.com/2008/0...er-tooth-diet/
It suggests that Sabre Tooths were more likely to eat similar sized prey then eat large ones like adult mammoths.

Quote:

Although the popular depiction of saber-tooth cats has them preying upon adult mammoths, their diets really were composed of more size-appropriate prey. Smilodon fatalis had a similar diet to the contemporary American lion, while Homotherium serum did prey upon mammoths, but took juveniles.

Well there is the possibility that the last ice age was indeed the last one for a long time:
from the same site: Last of the glaciers; Effects of rising CO<sub>2</sub> delayed as much as 50 years, analysis finds

Quote:

A new analysis of climate change data and the effects of rising levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxides suggests that we are at the end of the period in Earth's history during which icy glaciers form. The study further suggests that the effects of rising CO2 levels is delayed by as much as 50 years, but global average temperature might be as much as 5 degrees higher than it is today by the year 2100.