Analysis Of The Late Quaternary Extinction

The Late Quaternary Extinction happened approximately fifty to ten thousand years ago, and recently in the nineteenth century new light was shed upon why this extinction had happened and why it this extinction primarily targeted large animals. This extinction is vastly studied because it appeared to be more selective of large mammals than pervious extinction in North America. With recent advancements of carbon dating there has been hypothesis other than the over kill hypothesis which was primarily thought of humans decimating the populations of species. One primary reason that scientist believes large mammals had been primarily affected is because of their body size, which usually correlates with their reproductive periods. Scientist started looking at three
We know that today there some animals that maintain environmental conditions that are critical for the support of many other species. Human hunting strategies involved tracking their movements, then herding them and then killing multiple of them. Could mammoths and mastodons have been “keystone” species, or “ecological engineers” maintaining critical environmental conditions for other species? If so, their loss would have a cascade effect, resulting in further environmental change and loss of habitat for other species which were not the prime target of human hunters. As the prey populations plummeted their predators starved causing predator populations to decline. Also, as predator populations had increasing food shortages, along with increasing competition with humans and being preyed on by humans did not improve the likelihood of survival. In the end, it is terrible that these megafaunal species went extinct. Even after reading this article I could not point a finger at one primary reason causing the extinction. I would think that it would have to be a combination of environmental factors along with humans not realizing the consequences of over killing, and the large mammals unfortunately suffering the