End of the Megafauna with Ross MacPhee – AMNH SciCafe

You’ve probably heard of woolly mammoths and giant ground sloths—but what about gorilla-sized lemurs and 500-pound birds? Beginning about 50,000 years ago, many of these strange animals–megafauna–went extinct.

Ross MacPhee, curator in the Museum’s Department of Mammalogy, uses colorful illustrations to take us on a journey back in time to the world of the “megafauna,” and explains what scientists think may have happened to them.

This SciCafe took place at the Museum on December 5 2018.

#Extinction #Mammoth #Megafauna #Pleistocene #AMNH #SciCafe #Paleontology

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[patrickbrownrigg]

The ecological zonation for ~25, 000 years ago chart reflects coastlines for the present day. A chart showing the coastlines when the level then was ~400’ lower than now would be another interesting perspective. Thanks, great stuff here

[ericvulgate]

most of human history is sitting on the continental shelves offshore.

[TheCam]

Overgrill brought about overchill followed by overkill. Hah!

[avencebi]

I think it's ridiculous to just consider the over hunting theory not only do I not believe that they hunted random species to extinction but there were other beasts here that humans would have encountered like the short faced bear and American lion that would've been terrible for early humans to run into...something dramatic definitely happened 12, 000 years ago that changed the history of the planet

[pookie]

In the past 6 months two Greenland craters have been found. The latter just a week ago. Further the ice samples from North Pole/Greenland pulse 1 data shows a almost unbelievable sea level rise. Interesting that megafauna seem to drop like flies around this same time.

[jackspratt]

Seems to me that the younger Dryas impact is pretty well proven.

[johnortmann]

There's a fourth factor rarely mentioned: When humans arrived in a new place the took control of and completely changed the fire regimens. This in turn altered, destroyed and created new ecosystems.

[sentdc]

2:00 wow, I just realized something. My friend Tyler is a mega-fauna and I'm not :(
he's definitely over 100 lb.

[paninidagoat]

I wish he would make a book about the world without humans and have peter schouten back for great illustrations and focus on new areas like the Everglades or Indian rivers, or southern europe, to name a few areas and take us through a human free world

[ClarkSpark]

There is no reasonable way tribes of hunters wiped out all of the giant sloths, mastodons, mammoths, giant beavers, short-faced bears, freakin camels, horses, saber-toothed tigers, etc. across two continents. "Megafuana wouldn't recognize human hunters as a threat", is verging on comical as a sensible argument for overkill. Apparently hunters would be able to saunter up to the saber tooth/mammoth etc. and slice his throat. Makes zero real world sense. Hunter tribes had no survival incentive or capability to wipe out the entirety of all the largest mammals in their world. The black mat geological layer is the evidence and the smoking gun. Impact markers like nano-diamonds, melt glass, and spherules are found in the black mat layer and they are formed during bolide impacts to our planet. Most people aren't ready to hear the implications of this... But the evidence for the catastrophic meteor(s) strike on the Laurentide ice sheet 12, 800 years ago is overwhelming. Occam's razor says so.

[degucitas]

Whoever put the screen up behind the speaker is brilliant. It was so distracting before.

[richardsleep]

Thanks for this balanced explanation/introduction.

[tomasfrybl]

After this video I went to Joe Rogan's show with Graham Hancock and Randall Carlsson.

[orpheusmorphius]

Incredible lecture on the topic I'd buy his books

[spencergellsworth]

Fantastic book & fantastic speaker

[VashLoot]

What puzzles me about all of this is the fact that we still have too few ancient human remains. According to this we existed 250, 000 and we have more mega fauna bones than we do human. 2nd thing that still about all of this is that Africa, didn't experience that much mega fauna death. How is that possible if it is partially blamed on human overkill?!

[nickcullen]

the missing bodies and bones could possibly have been used for tools or other things perhaps? evidence in native weapons show the use of animal bones and teeth for weapon enchantment from the basic club to spear heads, also jewelry which could also be a way to explain how people find random fossil pieces scattered all over as they may have been dropped by the owner? even perhaps a percentage ground down for shamanism practice and so forth fertility from eating a crocs balls or so forth. to reinforce the overkill theory at-least

[wlhgmk]

Just a wee niggle. If we are going to call the icy period between the Emian interglacial and present Holocene interglacial, then we have to coin a new term for the 2.75m year period in which there were around 50 cycles between glacial and interglacial periods.

[erich]

So, if the definition of mega fauna is an animal that is over 100 lbs, and if a fully grown human is well over 100 lbs, therefore humans are mega fauna, and so are deer and horses and elk and moose and bear, etc...

[alphalunamare]

9:08 It is rather odd that the Ice did not cover the Temperate zones in the Southern hemisphere to the extent that it did in the North. Clearly something is amiss with this image or of the understanding that it represents.