#where like theres a lot of exinctions we have on record from colonization onwards

[grubloved]

"In Australia, Cosmos recently reported a fossil discovery that revealed giant birds, reptiles and marsupials died out 40,000 years ago due to extreme climatic conditions and environmental degradation.

Across the Pacific, a new study published in the journal Nature Communications has linked North American megafauna extinctions during the Late Quaternary to extreme temperature changes – not with overhunting by humans, as suggested by some.

More than 10,000 years ago, many giant critters roamed the continent, including mammoths (Mammuthus) and enormous beavers (Castoroides), horses, ground sloths (Megalonyx) and a one-tonne armadillo look-alike, the Glyptodon.

What drove their extinction is a “contentious topic”, according to Mathew Stewart from Germany’s Max Planck Institute and team, led by senior author Huw Groucutt.

Some blame human population growth and the arrival of highly skilled “big-game��� hunters around 14,000 years ago, for which the giant animals were no match. Others argue that archaeological evidence doesn’t support this notion, pointing to climatic and ecological disruptions."

[...]

"Results [of this new study by Huw Groucutt et al] showed megafauna populations had no associations with human numbers but were consistently correlated with temperature. As North America warmed up their numbers increased, and their subsequent declines and extinctions coincided with the cold snap.

However, the team says the story is likely to be much more complex and needs to be considered along with ecological changes associated with climatic variation – and humans could also have contributed indirectly through other means such as habitat fragmentation. They call for researchers to develop more reliable methods to clarify what really happened."