What caused the Pleistocene Mass Extinction?

[tigerluver]

(08-17-2020, 06:09 AM)Sully Wrote: A thread refuting the idea that climate change alone is an adequate explanatory factor. 

https://twitter.com/DRMegafauna/status/1084896526151942145

Personally I've come to believe that humans are chiefly and overwhelmingly to blame. The evidence is just too strong for any other hypothesis to be true. I think what sells it to me is we have control's in the other inter glacial periods to compare this to, some periods with warming higher than today's holocene by the way. The independent variable being us.

I do wonder what causes the distinction between the north and south hemispheres of Eurasia. Extinction wasn’t as brutal near and below the equator of Asia and Africa, at least during the last 10 kya. We know Stegodon disappeared very late and that is linked to vegetation change given how the Asian elephant has more versatile dentition. As such, maybe the northern hemisphere dealt with both the transition from steppe to forest and human pressures. In the south, forests became denser so the changes weren’t as extreme. Maybe forest dwelling species were also more protected from humans as we prefer open habitat.

In the case of South America, we also see a very drastic biome and vegetation change. The region went from grasslands to the rainforest rather quickly. All in all, wherever extinctions were commonplace, drastic vegetation shifts coincided. Reply