Australian megafauna died out due to climate change. Humans did not help, but they were already on the way out due to food shortages.
Mounting evidence points to the loss of most species before the peopling of Sahul (circa 50–45 ka) and a significant role for climate change in the disappearance of the continent’s megafauna.
A study of the fossil teeth of megafauna from Cuddie Springs in NSW suggests that climate change had a significant impact on the diets of these giant animals and may well have been a primary factor in their extinction.
When people spread across the globe, we hunted or out-competed so much shit to extinction. Mammoths, giant sloths, wooly rhinos, American cheetahs, American Lions, etc. IIRC the average is forty percent of all land animals above 100 pounds went extinct when we showed up someplace new.
Also, a lot of archeologists will tell you most of the work is sifting through trash, like ancient people’s actual trash.
Not here to argue, but I would like those examples. That’s not something that comes up often.
I know one is Easter Island. Dudes destroyed the ecosystem of the island and, predictably, starved to death.
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/551331468767432503
Indigenous Australians hunting megafauna to extinction is one that immediately comes to mind
The Maori wiped out huge numbers of species in New Zealand when they settled there about a thousand years ago
Australian megafauna died out due to climate change. Humans did not help, but they were already on the way out due to food shortages.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1302698110
https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2017/01/climate-change-helped-kill-off-super-sized-ice-age-animals-in-au
When people spread across the globe, we hunted or out-competed so much shit to extinction. Mammoths, giant sloths, wooly rhinos, American cheetahs, American Lions, etc. IIRC the average is forty percent of all land animals above 100 pounds went extinct when we showed up someplace new.
Also, a lot of archeologists will tell you most of the work is sifting through trash, like ancient people’s actual trash.
Easter island is a popular example.
Is that what happened to all the egg laying rabbits?
I believe the land sloth likely went extinct because of humans