Thank you for another great interview! I feel Chris Widga's analysis of archeological evidence regarding mammoths and mastodons was spot-on. I have always thought that humans were not major players in their disappearance, if for no other reason, than because there weren't enough people available to hunt them to extinction. Not just people in general, as in a total population, but strong hunters capable of potentially bringing down such a beast. Also, as pointed out, an animal the size of a mammoth or mastodon would have been extremely hazardous prey. Not to mention, assuming they had the intelligence and social structure of modern elephants, that adds another important dimension to the hunt! A powerful animal the size of a box truck is one thing, an animal that also has considerable intelligence and empathy for other herd members is quite another! I believe these creatures would have been tackled only under very specific circumstances. Again, I really enjoyed this presentation!
I have different perspectives. Perhaps humans were not that numerous, yet they had ages to bring the population of mammoths beyond the point of no return. What was said during the interview was that while mammoths were going down, mastodonts were rising in numbers. That clearly indicates the shift in the environment and the fall of the mammoth steppe, which was replaced by forests. Please remember that it takes years for elepahnts and mammoths as well to get mature. I suscpet that we simply have not given them the time to recover. And as for the climate - mammoths from Wrangler Islands or dwarf mammoths from Mediterranean sea islands show that this species was quite adaptative. The shift in climate together with scepsialised hunter put an end to them. Climate change for such big animals that were able to travel thousands of kilometers couldn't be the main/only reason. But we will see what another studies will uncover.
@@tsaicio Not only that but while it is true that Eurasian and American Proboscideans probably coexisted for millenia (or at least centuries in America) with Paleolithic humans, there is a deffinitive increase of dated archaeological sites at the time of the Bølling-Allerød interstadial, while this might be a sampling artifact, I think that it may point out to an increase in population density and mobility, which may had resulted in both greater hunting pressure and more impacts caused by anthropogenic modifications of the environments.
Shoutout to David Moscato who appears at 5:18 on the left. For those that don’t know, he’s one of the hosts of the Common Descent podcast, for those that still need to scratch their paleontology itch.
This stuff blows my mind, simply amazing!!! The great ecology engineers of North America are gone, I wish we could reintroduce our long lost megafauna, or animals similar, such as elephants, camels, tapirs, peccaries, so on.
Human actions could have contributed to mammoth extinction even if they were fairly minimal actions on the part of humans - if a death rate that allows the species to survive in a particular area is 100 deaths per year, and the average death rate is fluctuating around that number and then something humans do increases the annual death rate by one or two, or something humans do decreases the birth rate by, once again, 'just enough' that the mammoths start declining locally....and with enough locale undergoing similar marginal changes the species becomes extinct two or three thousand (or even hundred) years later. All because of little things that humans do. So a lack of evidence of our culpability doesn't demonstrate that we weren't culpable.
When over 30 species of megafauna who've been coexisting alongside humans for tens of thousands of years (NMexico footprints dated 23kya, ice age animal glyphs in Columbia numbering in the tens of thousands all pre-YD), all going extinct within hundreds of years of each other, and all on the same continent - it's simply ludicrous to think humans had anything at all to do with it. Rapid and dramatic climate change is the real answer, but the energy input required to melt miles of ice in that period can't be supplied by sunlight. Sea levels rose 300' within a decade in the 2nd meltwater event. People didn't hunt megafauna, and they didn't suddenly change the climate so drastically. People had nothing at all to do with the Younger Dryas impact on megafauna. Did people hunt that very last mammoth, kill and eat it? Maybe. I suppose that's how you can claim people contributed to the extinction.
@@TheDeadlyDan impact event caused massive meltdown of ice sheets with resulting floods. See channeled scablands in Washington state, Hiawatha glacier crater. Randall Carlson
@@jandrews6254 I live in Oregon on top of 300' of Montana topsoil. The Taurid meteor theory does provide the energy required to melt the northern ice sheets, the Carolina bays show it was an exceptionally large event if so, and the meltwater data says the entire North American continent was inundated with flood waters. Humans, megafauna, fossils, and tools all washed out to sea, leaving almost no trace prior to twelve thousand years ago.
@@TheDeadlyDan So you're saying that contined human pressures over millenia, couldn't, particularly in certain parts of natural climatic cycles, cause sudden population crashes of large megafauna? Additionally, we know these animals survived far longer on offshore islands and now, in recently published studies, on the mainland of the continent until 5,000 or so years BP. Attrition. Not meteors or meteorology.
@@rewild6134 You've introduced "couldn't", which I won't entertain. Strawmanning is disingenuous. I said it was ludicrous to think that we were somehow responsible for the extinction of over 30 species of megafauna. Why were all species under 40kg spared from this interference you suggest we were responsible for? And how does it matter if a few stragglers survived well into the holocene? Look at the La Brea data on smiladon alone. They were predators, ran in packs, and they pulled thousands of them from the tar. Predator to prey ratio studies says that means there were a boat load of prey animals. No, it's ludicrous to think we had anything to do with the megafauna extinctions.
If mastodons migrated into North America 16 million years ago, and mammoths at least 1 million years ago, why couldn’t human ancestor hunters have been following them?
47:30-47:50 'more efficient to... bring in horses..." - Seriously, could Icelandic Horses (a 1000 year old modern breed) be selected for robustness a few generations and released into regions that need them? Horses would be much easier to manage.
Do we really need the Wooly before the word mammoth to distinguish from what? The elusive corduroy mammoth, which of course is extinct because the hunters could hear it coming!
@@zenolachance1181 the first half of your comment, though, was a logical question. It needed answered. It's obvious the second part was a joke, but if someone else hadn't answered the first question, I would have. _~shrug~_ If you didn't want a response, you should've noted that it was a rhetorical question.
@@MaryAnnNytowl it's a complete joke from a famous comedian whose name has slipped my mind. But it's the entire joke from start to finish is exactly how he framed it
What if the mammoth & mastodon extinction was caused by a nonhuman species, say bison? When Europeans first arrived in the Midwest, there were 10s of millions of bison all over the Great Plains. Maybe the bison reproduced faster and crowded the slower breeding mammoths & mastodons out of the environment.
What would be the point of bringing mammoths back to life? Edit: If we as a species really truly want to manage climate change, there are better ways to do it.
Imo, funding and attention to the issues. Have you ever heard of the experimental ecology station in northern Siberia called Pleistocene Park? If they had 1 or 2 mammoths, do you think you would have? Also, its just super cool lol. And sometimes, unexpected important discoveries can come out of things that seem frivolous. Like, the Space Race was basically a flexing contest between the US and Russia, but how many important discoveries were made as a result?
Just because there are "other ways to manage" AGW climate change doesn't mean that this would still help get it done. It's actually a logical way to help keep the permafrost frozen, along with all of the other changes we need to make, _because_ even if we switch to totally green energy *TODAY,* Climate Change will continue for a few decades before it starts to make a difference, simply because the system is so large, and the oceans have so much extra heat energy to bleed off, that means it's a very slow process.
Thank you for another great interview! I feel Chris Widga's analysis of archeological evidence regarding mammoths and mastodons was spot-on. I have always thought that humans were not major players in their disappearance, if for no other reason, than because there weren't enough people available to hunt them to extinction. Not just people in general, as in a total population, but strong hunters capable of potentially bringing down such a beast. Also, as pointed out, an animal the size of a mammoth or mastodon would have been extremely hazardous prey. Not to mention, assuming they had the intelligence and social structure of modern elephants, that adds another important dimension to the hunt! A powerful animal the size of a box truck is one thing, an animal that also has considerable intelligence and empathy for other herd members is quite another! I believe these creatures would have been tackled only under very specific circumstances. Again, I really enjoyed this presentation!
Mammoth of Extinction
th-cam.com/video/WfpOdvuidF0/w-d-xo.html
I have different perspectives. Perhaps humans were not that numerous, yet they had ages to bring the population of mammoths beyond the point of no return. What was said during the interview was that while mammoths were going down, mastodonts were rising in numbers. That clearly indicates the shift in the environment and the fall of the mammoth steppe, which was replaced by forests. Please remember that it takes years for elepahnts and mammoths as well to get mature. I suscpet that we simply have not given them the time to recover.
And as for the climate - mammoths from Wrangler Islands or dwarf mammoths from Mediterranean sea islands show that this species was quite adaptative. The shift in climate together with scepsialised hunter put an end to them. Climate change for such big animals that were able to travel thousands of kilometers couldn't be the main/only reason. But we will see what another studies will uncover.
@@tsaicio Not only that but while it is true that Eurasian and American Proboscideans probably coexisted for millenia (or at least centuries in America) with Paleolithic humans, there is a deffinitive increase of dated archaeological sites at the time of the Bølling-Allerød interstadial, while this might be a sampling artifact, I think that it may point out to an increase in population density and mobility, which may had resulted in both greater hunting pressure and more impacts caused by anthropogenic modifications of the environments.
This idea has fascinated me for a long time! Thanks for making this video!
And here I thought we had mammoths and mastodons all figured out.
Mammoth of Extinction
th-cam.com/video/WfpOdvuidF0/w-d-xo.html
Shoutout to David Moscato who appears at 5:18 on the left. For those that don’t know, he’s one of the hosts of the Common Descent podcast, for those that still need to scratch their paleontology itch.
This stuff blows my mind, simply amazing!!! The great ecology engineers of North America are gone, I wish we could reintroduce our long lost megafauna, or animals similar, such as elephants, camels, tapirs, peccaries, so on.
Mammoth of Extinction
th-cam.com/video/WfpOdvuidF0/w-d-xo.html
Human actions could have contributed to mammoth extinction even if they were fairly minimal actions on the part of humans - if a death rate that allows the species to survive in a particular area is 100 deaths per year, and the average death rate is fluctuating around that number and then something humans do increases the annual death rate by one or two, or something humans do decreases the birth rate by, once again, 'just enough' that the mammoths start declining locally....and with enough locale undergoing similar marginal changes the species becomes extinct two or three thousand (or even hundred) years later. All because of little things that humans do. So a lack of evidence of our culpability doesn't demonstrate that we weren't culpable.
When over 30 species of megafauna who've been coexisting alongside humans for tens of thousands of years (NMexico footprints dated 23kya, ice age animal glyphs in Columbia numbering in the tens of thousands all pre-YD), all going extinct within hundreds of years of each other, and all on the same continent - it's simply ludicrous to think humans had anything at all to do with it. Rapid and dramatic climate change is the real answer, but the energy input required to melt miles of ice in that period can't be supplied by sunlight. Sea levels rose 300' within a decade in the 2nd meltwater event. People didn't hunt megafauna, and they didn't suddenly change the climate so drastically. People had nothing at all to do with the Younger Dryas impact on megafauna.
Did people hunt that very last mammoth, kill and eat it? Maybe. I suppose that's how you can claim people contributed to the extinction.
@@TheDeadlyDan impact event caused massive meltdown of ice sheets with resulting floods. See channeled scablands in Washington state, Hiawatha glacier crater. Randall Carlson
@@jandrews6254 I live in Oregon on top of 300' of Montana topsoil. The Taurid meteor theory does provide the energy required to melt the northern ice sheets, the Carolina bays show it was an exceptionally large event if so, and the meltwater data says the entire North American continent was inundated with flood waters. Humans, megafauna, fossils, and tools all washed out to sea, leaving almost no trace prior to twelve thousand years ago.
@@TheDeadlyDan So you're saying that contined human pressures over millenia, couldn't, particularly in certain parts of natural climatic cycles, cause sudden population crashes of large megafauna? Additionally, we know these animals survived far longer on offshore islands and now, in recently published studies, on the mainland of the continent until 5,000 or so years BP. Attrition. Not meteors or meteorology.
@@rewild6134 You've introduced "couldn't", which I won't entertain. Strawmanning is disingenuous. I said it was ludicrous to think that we were somehow responsible for the extinction of over 30 species of megafauna. Why were all species under 40kg spared from this interference you suggest we were responsible for? And how does it matter if a few stragglers survived well into the holocene? Look at the La Brea data on smiladon alone. They were predators, ran in packs, and they pulled thousands of them from the tar. Predator to prey ratio studies says that means there were a boat load of prey animals. No, it's ludicrous to think we had anything to do with the megafauna extinctions.
If mastodons migrated into North America 16 million years ago, and mammoths at least 1 million years ago, why couldn’t human ancestor hunters have been following them?
What's in the orange bag in the corner? Such questions haunt us all.
Mammoths were mammoth. But mastodons weren't. They were mastodoneth.
I very much enjoyed this video. I have a recently found a mastodon skull that you may want a test sample from.
Mammoth of Extinction
th-cam.com/video/WfpOdvuidF0/w-d-xo.html
Ooookay.
47:30-47:50 'more efficient to... bring in horses..." - Seriously, could Icelandic Horses (a 1000 year old modern breed) be selected for robustness a few generations and released into regions that need them? Horses would be much easier to manage.
23:55.
that guy is smart.
He's a vertebrate?
Do we really need the Wooly before the word mammoth to distinguish from what? The elusive corduroy mammoth, which of course is extinct because the hunters could hear it coming!
The Woolly is a late, cold-adapted Ice Age species. There are other mammoths, e.g. Steppe mammoth in Eurasia and Columbian mammoth in North America.
@@eljanrimsa5843 you do know that's a joke from a comedian right?
@@zenolachance1181 the first half of your comment, though, was a logical question. It needed answered. It's obvious the second part was a joke, but if someone else hadn't answered the first question, I would have. _~shrug~_ If you didn't want a response, you should've noted that it was a rhetorical question.
@@MaryAnnNytowl it's a complete joke from a famous comedian whose name has slipped my mind. But it's the entire joke from start to finish is exactly how he framed it
What if the mammoth & mastodon extinction was caused by a nonhuman species, say bison? When Europeans first arrived in the Midwest, there were 10s of millions of bison all over the Great Plains. Maybe the bison reproduced faster and crowded the slower breeding mammoths & mastodons out of the environment.
What would be the point of bringing mammoths back to life? Edit: If we as a species really truly want to manage climate change, there are better ways to do it.
Imo, funding and attention to the issues. Have you ever heard of the experimental ecology station in northern Siberia called Pleistocene Park? If they had 1 or 2 mammoths, do you think you would have?
Also, its just super cool lol. And sometimes, unexpected important discoveries can come out of things that seem frivolous. Like, the Space Race was basically a flexing contest between the US and Russia, but how many important discoveries were made as a result?
Just because there are "other ways to manage" AGW climate change doesn't mean that this would still help get it done. It's actually a logical way to help keep the permafrost frozen, along with all of the other changes we need to make, _because_ even if we switch to totally green energy *TODAY,* Climate Change will continue for a few decades before it starts to make a difference, simply because the system is so large, and the oceans have so much extra heat energy to bleed off, that means it's a very slow process.
Pealeo americas, there were no indus river peoples living in the Americasuntil the 19th century.
"Pealeo?" Really?
Mammoth of Extinction
th-cam.com/video/WfpOdvuidF0/w-d-xo.html
Sorry, but this is worthless info ... An educated guess at best ... Who gives a F on any of this? How has this research EVER benefit man?
somewhere i missed the memo that research was only for the benefit of man.