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anybody
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Date: November 30, 2021 06:47AM
When the Ice Age ended, so did the vast grassland that once covered most of North America.
As the climate changed to become what we know today, the grazing animals began to die off — and also the predators that hunted them for food.
By the time humans showed up, they were already on their way out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_steppeThe mammoth steppe was dominated in biomass by bison, horse, and the woolly mammoth, and was the center for the evolution of the Pleistocene woolly fauna.[7] Megaloceros, saiga antelope and musk ox also lived on the mammoth steppe (the first one not in the northernmost parts). In the siberian parts were animals like the argali, Snow sheep and the Mongolian gazelle. Not so far before the last glacial maximum (roughly 40.000 years ago), an extinct paleospecies of argali (Ovis argaloides) lived also in Europe.[26] Notable carnivores found across the whole range of the mammoth steppe included Panthera spelaea, the Wolverine, the wolf Canis lupus and the brown bear Ursus arctos. While the cave hyena was part of mammoth steppe faunas in Europe, it did not extend into the core high latitude north Asian range of the biome.[27] Bird remains are rare because of their fragile structure, but there is some evidence for snowy owl, willow ptarmigan, gyrfalcon, common raven and great bustard. Other bird species are white-tailed eagle and golden eagle. Vultures like griffon vulture and cinereous vulture are not known but they were likely common scavengers on the mammoth steppe, following the large herds and scavenging on death animals. On Wrangel Island, the remains of woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse, bison and musk ox have been found. Reindeer and small animal remains do not preserve, but reindeer excrement has been found in sediment.[6] Small animals on the mammoth steppe were, for example, steppe pika, ground squirrels and alpine marmot. In the most arid regions of the mammoth steppe that were to the south of Central Siberia and Mongolia, woolly rhinoceros were common[28][6] but woolly mammoths were rare.[29][6] Reindeer live in the far north of Mongolia today and historically their southern boundary passed through Germany and along the steppes of eastern Europe,[30][6] indicating they once covered much of the mammoth steppe.[6] Mammoths survived on the Taimyr Peninsula until the Holocene.[8][6] A small population of mammoths survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, up until 3750 BC,[31][32] and the small mammoths[33] of Wrangel Island survived until 1650 BC.[34][35] Bison in Alaska and the Yukon, and horses and muskox in northern Siberia, have survived the loss of the mammoth steppe.[6] One study has proposed that a change of suitable climate caused a significant drop in the mammoth population size, which made them vulnerable to hunting from expanding human populations. The coincidence of both of these impacts in the Holocene most likely set the place and time for the extinction of the woolly mammoth.[20]
Decline of the mammoth steppe
The mammoth steppe had a cold, dry climate.[7][6] During the past interglacial warmings, forests of trees and shrubs expanded northward into the mammoth steppe, when northern Siberia, Alaska and the Yukon (Beringia) would have formed a mammoth steppe refugium. When the planet grew colder again, the mammoth steppe expanded.[6] This ecosystem covered wide areas of the northern part of the globe, thrived for approximately 100,000 years without major changes, but then diminished to small regions around 12,000 years ago.[7]
https://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2012/11/29/why-did-horses-die-out-in-north-america/Recent findings from J. Tyler Faith, Ph.D candidate in the hominid paleobiology doctoral programme at the University of Wyoming, and Todd Surovell, associate professor of anthropology at the university, suggest the mass extinction occurred in a geological instant.
Faith’s research revealed the extinctions as a sudden event that took place between 13.8 and 11.4 thousand years ago.
Faith’s findings provide some support to the idea that this mass extinction was due to human overkill, an extra-terrestrial impact or other rapid events rather than slow attrition.
“The massive extinction coincides precisely with human arrival on the continent, abrupt climate change, and a possible extraterrestrial impact event,” Faith said.
“It remains possible that any one of these or all, contributed to the sudden extinctions. We now have a better understanding of when the extinctions took place and the next step is to figure out why.”
So was it climate change and a resulting change in vegetation that drove horses to extinction? With evidence that changes in grass resulted in the extinction of roughly half of North America’s equine species six million years ago, is it not reasonable to assume that a similar vegetative change some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago could not have done the same thing?
The weight of evidence still rests in this camp, but totally dismissing the role of over-hunting is no longer so easy.
Not so long ago, there was no evidence of an overlap between North American horse extinction and the arrival of humans, let alone evidence of their hunting horses.
Then, findings indicated an overlap of perhaps a few hundred years. The latest research suggests at least one pocket of horses in Alaska persisting until some 7600 years ago, creating a potential overlap of some 6000 years.
However, the undoubted regional variations in horse extinction and limited knowledge about the geographical spread and numbers of the earliest human inhabitants of North America further clouds the picture.
There is now clear evidence that mankind hunted North American horses but were they doing so in numbers that made a difference? It is a question that may never be answered.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/2021 06:53AM by anybody.