I've been going on a few times about how human hunters expanding out of Africa wiped out most of the megafauna on the other continents. (Big beasts in Africa had co-evolved with humans so had less of a surprise when they started throwing spears.) Recent research shows now that even Neanderthals successfully hunted and butchered elephants. As they left Africa before modern humans did, this widens the time range for human-caused megafauna extinctions.
With the last three surviving species of elephants still endangered, I used this as an excuse to look at the long history of humans bothering elephants. The resulting feature is out now (Note that the figure captions 1 and 3 in the html version are currently switched around, this will be fixed later this week - the PDF version has them in the correct order):
Of elephants and men
Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 2, 22 January 2024, Pages R37-R40
Restricted access to full text and PDF download
(will become open access one year after publication)
Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)
See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.
Last year's thread ishere .
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which became extinct around 4,000 years ago, has become a key species in studies of megafauna extinction. (Photo: Joseph Martinez/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 Deed).)
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