On Friday, Boxing Day, Chris Doss wrote:
> This leads me to suspect that the idea that it was people who wiped out
> the mammoths, mastodons, wooly rhinos, North American horses, etc. is a
> big heap of bullshit. Does anybody more knowledgeable about this have
> any opinion?
I don't know anything about the African and Australian megafauna situations. But the hypothesis for North America (also known as the "bow-wave theory"), while respectable and of long-standing, is still very controversial. IIUC the majority of paleontologists today don't accept it except partially (i.e., that it contributed to extinctions, or that it was responsible for the extinction some species but not others). IIUC, most today think that climate had more to do with it.
But the data for this period is still is extremely sketchy, and lots of extrapolation and speculation is necessary to back up any theory. We still aren't at all sure about the patterns of migration during that period. But you need something to explain the big megafauna die off, so people take their pick.
Personally I'm a skeptic myself on the horses question, which is in many ways the key one when it comes to later civilization differentiation.
Michael