The bones of a pygmy mammoth. (credit score: Nationwide Park Service/Justin Tweet)
People have not at all times been nice to nature. However not less than our ancestors might not have killed off island megafauna within the distant previous, in order that’s one thing. New analysis, revealed within the Proceedings of the Pure Academy of Sciences, suggests that there is not sufficient information to say that hominids within the Pleistocene—2.6 million to 11,700 years in the past—had been liable for many of the extinctions on the islands they traveled to.
Overkill
The speculation that homo sapiens’ distant ancestors killed off the world’s myriad historical megafauna (not simply on islands) dates again to 1966, with geoscientist Paul Martin’s “overkill” proposal. However the thought has been floating round for a lot longer than the formal proposal. In keeping with Julien Louys—affiliate professor of paleontology at Griffiths College in Australia and an creator of the brand new analysis—the query of what brought about the dying of the world’s megafauna dates again to the 19th century.
“It has, in sure circles, change into very polarized,” Louys informed Ars.
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