Megafauna Essay
Over many thousand years ago Australia and some other continents were populated by huge mammals. All was going fine until the end of the last Ice Age, tragedy struck. A large numbers of species had vanished leaving little evidence but Australia had suffered the worst. So a number of reasons what could of causes this leads to various scientists but also subject of debates.
In the “Whodunnit” article, John Alroy an evolutionary biologist tested his theory by using a computer model to predict that human hunters demolished certain species. The model shows humans killing 41 species. But this doesn’t support the theory because it’s hard to believe a computer would create imagery with little evidence.
In the “Whodunnit” article, John Alroy an evolutionary biologist tested his theory by using a computer model to predict that human hunters demolished certain species. The model shows humans killing 41 species. But this doesn’t support the theory because it’s hard to believe a computer would create imagery with little evidence.
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In the paper by Dr Tim Flannery all of the younger sites were omitted from their research, making it look as if they vanished much earlier (50,000 to 40,000 years) to match with estimates of the arrival of humans dated to around 56,000 years ago (which also ignores other estimates dating human arrival much earlier).
Flannery and a group of other scientists published a paper that attempted to incriminate the prehistoric Aboriginal people in the murder of the mega fauna. The theory is that humans arrived shortly before the mega fauna became extinct and therefore must be somehow responsible. Later scientist falsely believed that mega fauna 20 000 years ago, when Australia was cooler. There was evidence provided by Miller et al data by extracting the amino acid in the emu and “Genyornis” (giant birds) eggshells. The results presents that climatically conditions caused the extinction. This evidence may show little but not enough support because he’d focus his attention on the birds too much.
The short response of Dr Stephen Wroe, palaeontologist at Sydney University, is “I disagree, I disagree quite strongly''. But he has a lot more to say on the subject, and takes issue with those who look for short, simple, theories of Pleistocene mega fauna extinction. Dr Wroe points out that we do not know exactly when the mega fauna became extinct and we do not know exactly when humans came to Australia. The Research at Cuddie Springs by Judith Furby shows that the mega fauna became extinct between 31,000 and 40,000. Evidence was strongly shown that bones and stones determined radiocarbon dating. There was a piece of evidence that proves to be useful, When butchering animals cuts and chop marks are usually found, so the way a bone is broken sometimes supports homo sapiens were present at the time.
There is no clue of knowing whether humans arrived before the mega fauna died out or after, a fact that is certainly not helped by the death of fossils due to the drying out of Australia's climate around 20,000 years ago. This not only prevented many fossils from forming but also destroyed many that had been formed. Patient is the only option till new the technology is invented to solve this usual mystery.
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