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 here:
Of elephants and men
Current Biology Volume 34, Issue 2, 22 January 2024, Pages R37-R40
FREE access to full text and PDF download
See also my Mastodon thread where I highlighted all CB features of 2024.
The thread for 2023 is here .
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).)
No comments:
Post a Comment