[lbo-talk] Wherefore art thou, Megafauna? (human predation)

[Somebody Somebody]

It's true that there were fewer megafauna extinctions in Asia. However, there were extinctions. Stegodon, a elephant relative, Gigantopithecus, the largest ape and real-life Yeti, giant tapirs, and giant pangolins all disappeared from the fossil record. Also, note that Asia, like Africa was home to ancient man for an extended period of time, in which native wildlife could have co-evolved and developed the disposition and wariness to avoid being extirpated. Primitive representatives of the genus Homo lived from present day Georgia to Java many hundreds of thousands of years before they arrived in the New World a mere 11,000 years ago. There's no doubt that the North, South American, and Australian extinctions are more dramatic and sudden. But, this is probably because these were the only continents to never have any species of man other than Homo sapiens proper. In other words, the wildlife was "naive" to the danger of man in the same way birds in the

 Galapagos will feed from your hand. Moreover, these continents were first settled in a rapid manner by cultures with an advanced suite of technologies, the most notorious being the Clovis people.

Australia had no moas, but other large flightless birds like dromornithids, a type of gigantic duck, the last of which, the 500 lb. Genyornis, faded from the fossil record after the time of aboriginal arrival. The extinction of moas, however, is hardly in dispute. Research of Maori middens, where food trash was collected, indicates that moas were part of the local diet for at most a hundred years before suddenly vanishing. In other words, the ten species of moas became extinct a mere few generations after the arrival of Polynesians in the North and South Islands. As the only large animals in New Zealand, and indeed, easily the largest beast these people would have come across in the South Pacific, they were too singular a food source to not be exploited. Unfortunately, their exploitation exceeded their birth rate. Once they were gone, their predator, the great Haast's Eagle, followed them onto the museum shelf.