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Humans are "Off the Hook" For African Extinction
#1
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46306622

This article talks about how Africa, millions of years ago, contained many more large mammals, not just Rhinos, Hippos, Giraffes, and elephants. Many researchers blamed the slow decline of them over the past thousands of years, on early versions of humans. Now, scientists are starting to think that the decline in these large animals happened way before these early humans were present, and able to actually hunt these huge mammals.  A common reason hypothesized by experts is is the decreasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the course of the years these mammals started declining in numbers.  The decreasing CO2 levels help grasslands flourish, but negatively effect trees, which these ancient mammals mainly fed on. 

This slow decrease in large mammals in Africa occurred over the course of millions of years, this is obviously way before even the earliest of human-like species existed, so it becomes clear that humans did not fully cause this extinction process. Eventually, these early humans started hunting, once this decline in large mammals was already occurring. Now with more predators, these mammal's decrease in numbers increased, and about 28 lineages of species went extinct. Furthermore, some large predators, like the saber tooth cat, may have adapted to hunting certain large mammal groups, and once these mammals decreased in numbers, and eventually became extinct, the cat's had no food source, and eventually became extinct themselves. This extinction of predators in this region, of course, was most likely aided by early human species hunting these predators as well.  

Finally, I agree with the fact that climate change (CO2 levels) aided in the extinction of these large African mammals. I do not believe that early humans, with their limited tools to hunt, could single handedly wipe out up to 28 lineages of large mammal species. These humans, even with the help of predators in the region were not well equipped enough to pull off this kind of extinction, to this many kinds of creatures.
#2
(11-23-2018, 11:23 AM)Blake Cherpin Wrote: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46306622

This article talks about how Africa, millions of years ago, contained many more large mammals, not just Rhinos, Hippos, Giraffes, and elephants. Many researchers blamed the slow decline of them over the past thousands of years, on early versions of humans. Now, scientists are starting to think that the decline in these large animals happened way before these early humans were present, and able to actually hunt these huge mammals.  A common reason hypothesized by experts is is the decreasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the course of the years these mammals started declining in numbers.  The decreasing CO2 levels help grasslands flourish, but negatively effect trees, which these ancient mammals mainly fed on. 

This slow decrease in large mammals in Africa occurred over the course of millions of years, this is obviously way before even the earliest of human-like species existed, so it becomes clear that humans did not fully cause this extinction process. Eventually, these early humans started hunting, once this decline in large mammals was already occurring. Now with more predators, these mammal's decrease in numbers increased, and about 28 lineages of species went extinct. Furthermore, some large predators, like the saber tooth cat, may have adapted to hunting certain large mammal groups, and once these mammals decreased in numbers, and eventually became extinct, the cat's had no food source, and eventually became extinct themselves. This extinction of predators in this region, of course, was most likely aided by early human species hunting these predators as well.  

Finally, I agree with the fact that climate change (CO2 levels) aided in the extinction of these large African mammals. I do not believe that early humans, with their limited tools to hunt, could single handedly wipe out up to 28 lineages of large mammal species. These humans, even with the help of predators in the region were not well equipped enough to pull off this kind of extinction, to this many kinds of creatures.

I also agree that people didn't cause the extinction of these large african mammals as people didn't have the required tools to cause such an extinction. Maybe as the world was advancing it was heating up the earth causing more carbon dioxide into the air which cause the extinction of the mammals. As the earth was heating up naturally it most likely caused the mammals to go extinct and during that time there was nothing people could to do stop the carbon dioxide as we didn't have enough knowledge during that time about carbon dioxide or even the earth.
#3
I won't say that humans are off the hook because maybe not the indigenous people of Africa cause the extensions to happen, but I would believe that the Europeans might have caused it because of their rapid industrialization that created a lot more pollution and overwhelmed the earth. Also, they fully colonized Africa in 1913 hey had the weapons to hunt these species for what the Europeans wanted, so that's what I think what had happened.
#4
(11-28-2018, 02:16 PM)Radu Almasanu Wrote: I won't say that humans are off the hook because maybe not the indigenous people of Africa cause the extensions to happen, but I would believe that the Europeans might have caused it because of their rapid industrialization that created a lot more pollution and overwhelmed the earth. Also, they fully colonized Africa in 1913 hey had the weapons to hunt these species for what the Europeans wanted, so that's what I think what had happened.

I do not think this is exactly the case in the referenced article. I agree with Blake in regards to who the blame belongs to. I think it is very unlikely the early people in Africa were able to create advanced nd efficient enough tools and methods that allowed them to hunt the large scale animals that were in coexistance with those people. It is confirmed that the large animals were highly dependant on trees as their source of food, and with the decrease of CO2 taking a toll on the growth and nourishment of the trees, results in the death of the animals that depended on them. The article expresses that the extinction of of these mammals happening over many years, supporting the idea the CO2 levels dropping, aided in the death of certain large mammals and eventually the extinction. With that being said, arises the idea that humans, yet there hold a substantial amount of blame for extinction of certain species, they are not the sole contributors.


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