Talk:Late Pleistocene extinctions

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This is a surprisingly terrible article that goes out of its way to argue for the Overkill hypothesis, when that hypothesis has its own article. It's crap and definitely needs expert attention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.235.139.169 (talk) 08:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

This is not an extinction event. I propose that this thread be renamed to "Quaternary extinction" to be more scientific. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.37.247 (talk) 02:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with the renaming. The word event can still be used within the article when used by a particular source. On another matter you said here that Holocene extinctions were not over a short timescale compared to the mass extinction events. Many extinctions over a period of 10s to a few thousand years is fairly quick. According to the article the Permo-Triassic extinction event took 100,000 years for plants to fully respond. On a geological timescale of order 100 million years this can still be described as an event. Polargeo (talk) 07:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but several of the events occurred within a few generations due to the combined effects of the root stimuli and nuclear winter. When the affects of nuclear winter are added, the timeframe is reduced considerably. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.37.247 (talk) 20:49, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Remember NPOV...

There seems to be a lot of edits recently making "arguments against" various hypotheses. Admittedly, I'm not up-to-date on the latest scientific literature, so hopefully someone's keeping an eye on this. We need to be sure that neither side (for or against the Overkill hypothesis) is given undue weight and the article meets WP:NPOV. I have noticed a few weasel words in the article, so it clearly needs review by an expert. –Visionholder (talk) 22:07, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily say I'm "up-to-date," but I've read some of the relevant literature, and I'm quite surprised that this article is so heavily slanted towards overkill when the scholarly consensus these days seems to weigh in the opposite direction. This passage, for example: "However, Hunn's comments are in reference to a hunter-prey equilibrium state reached after thousands of years of coexistence, and are not relevant to hunters newly arrived on a virgin land mass full of easily taken big game. The well-established practice of industrial-scale moa butchering by the early Maori, involving enormous wastage of less choice portions of the meat, indicates that these arguments are incorrect." Regardless of overkill's correctness or support among scholars, this is a ridiculously POV and credulous passage. "virgin land," really? Let's not use loaded language in what is supposed to be an encyclopedic article, please.75.92.198.15 (talk) 01:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The passage is not really scientific, and the text is probably too much pro "hunting hypothesis". In fact a great proportion of scientists in the field argue against hunting as the main reason, but in my opinion there is not a overweight in the direction of climate hypothesis. I can try to fix some very unscientific statements, but I am afraid I am also not a perfect person to do that, since a am also a supporter of the hunting hypothesis. ...but whom would you accuse, if there was a murder between 8 and 10 pm in one house, a second one between 1 and 3 am in another house and third one arround 5 in a park in the moring. And some people saw one person always with a knife appearing at these places arround the time of the kills? ....Cheers, --Altaileopard (talk) 21:02, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

a few remarks on bison, and human population pressure

my first remark is that it is contained several times in the article that a seperation of the bison of 240Ka left it naive. wich is unsourced. also i think it is not true. since firstly evolutionairy adaptions dont necessarilly disappear without trace in such a short period (morphologically they tend to do not). and secondly it is unclear if this adaption would have a possible positive effect on the species survivability in the abscence of humans, it may eg. have helped against predation through shortfaced bear (roughly similar size and looks), or canines( that share a roughly similar hunting method with humans). so i would like to see it sourced and provided with examples. my other remark is that even very small numbers of eg. seal hunters (like 1 or a few crews so under 100 individuals) managed to extinguish complete colonies of sea-mammals in mere years and species in at most decades. since that was not uncommonly done by clubbing or spearing it also shows no advanced technology's are needed for it.24.132.171.225 (talk) 04:34, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

later in article i find this: "Such a disease needs to be capable of killing of three species of bison while leaving a third very closely related species unaffected." wich in my opinion renders the whole bison argument very moot. it shows we actually have to do with either an adapted species, the most adaptable species, or a species that was kept in a certain regard (not necessarily reference) by humans, a thing btw wich is strongly suggested by the dependency of plains cultures of the bison. fascinatingly i think evidence for this could be found. one thing that would eg. be telling is if the other bison species migrated over considerably smaller distances, that could be habitually covered by humans. other reasons for preferential predation by humans could be more meat per kill, a more agressive species (that would simply put provide a hunter with bigger praise, or even result in considerable effort to hunt the animal for safety reasons). there is a sheer endless list of such factors, eg. a strong family bond like in elephants that stay with the dead would be lethal for any animal intensively hunted, yet more usefull or less adapted to humans then elephants, etc.24.132.171.225 (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

It's difficult to see the logic in the assertion in the article that the relative abundance of bison in the late Pleistocene makes the history of resilience of the megafauna to climate change irrelevant. There are often distinct faunal components to particular geological stages - eg the hippopotamus present in the 5e interglacial in Britain. Climate change in the late Pleistocene is associated with changes in the proportions and geographical distribution of species, whether the proportions are novel or not. (See for example, E Vrba, Palaeoclimate and Evolution) - a similar pattern is observed with vegetation. What is strikingly new with the arrival of modern humans is that many more of the displaced species, instead of surviving in refugial populations and recolonising at a later date, are permanently gone. Orbitalforam (talk) 10:33, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Not sure why this isn't clear. Yes, there are distinct faunal components during particular geological stages; the entire concept of land mammal ages, for example, is built on this fact. But it's reasonable and logical to assert that changing mammalian faunal composition will result in altered responses by the mammals in question to altered ecological circumstances. Bighorn sheep in the deserts of western North America, for example, have responses to changes in both weather and climate that can be assessed and quantified. Add burros to the landscape, and those responses will be somewhat different due to increased competition for resources. Add cattle, and responses will change still further. And such differences can be substantial; bighorns left to themselves may thrive in the deserts, but when burros are added, the burros have to be culled in order to maintain native wildlife, else the community would collapse. But relative abundance is critical in these instances; where a few burros or cattle might not make a big difference, large numbers of them would. In a like manner, the addition of abundant numbers of bison at the end of the Pleistocene (and not before according to the available data) constituted a major change in mammalian faunal composition that likely contributed to increased competition for available resources. Ecosystems in place for over a million years (horses, camels, mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths, etc. and their attendant carnivoran predators) were thus faced with a dramatic new component. This abundant new addition was competing for many of the same resources; during periods of climate change, when these resources were varying in their abundance and distribution, such competition would have been enhanced. Since bison were not just abundant but also widespread across the continent during this time, this competition would have been continent-wide. (In contrast, human-megafaunal sites are far more scarce; in southern California and southern Nevada, for example, out of dozens of late Pleistocene mammalian fossil localities, there are zero kill sites or butchery sites or other indications that humans and Pleistocene megafauna interacted.) Given this difference, it is unreasonable to argue that the past resilience of the megafauna to climate change was pertinent to the end-Pleistocene event. The composition of the megafauna was altered, dramatically, and so the success of the animals during earlier periods of change is no longer relevant.170.164.50.204 (talk) 00:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Another puzzle about the bison would seem to be that it survived not on isolated islands, in inaccessible mountains or dense forests, but on the wide open plains where it would have been easy to hunt. Surely an obvious conclusion would be that the bison provided such a valuable source of food and fur that it was deliberately allowed to survive?Walshie79 (talk) 23:32, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

So, the Clovis were so intelligent to decide to kill until the last one any mammuth/mastodon/ancient bison, but leave alive the plain bison? And eliminate atleast 3 species of Pronghorn and all the 5 species of horses.. This is scientifically atleast as the Atlantis existence, to my mind. And definitively not- proof. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.20.209.65 (talk) 16:22, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

more rainfall

The megafauna demise in Siberia appeared to have coincided with dramatic increase in rainfall at the Preboreal. The youngest fossils are about 9300 carbon years BP ~ 11,000 calendar years. The mammoth steppe changed into marshes and swamps, which was totally unsuitable for mammoths etc. Islands like Wrangel island tend to have their own micro climate, reason why the mammoths could have survived for a longer periodThere is no evidence of human occupation at the majority of the last refugia (ic Taimyr peninsula ). Obviously this is in favor of the climate change hypothesis. I intend to add that shortly.

That was for sure a big problem for the marsupial lion in Australia and the giant ground sloth in Patagonia... --Altaileopard (talk) 21:05, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

wait, the 'human overhunting'believers say that the European and american extinction are not correlated, right? Now the climate change is not a good explaination, then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.20.209.65 (talk) 16:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Stilostomella extinction

This major event of oceanic foraminifera extinction in the mid pleistocene is at least as dramatic as the mammal extinctions, however totally unknown to wikipedia. I wonder if this warrants a new seperate article or another chapter here. Thoughts? http://jfr.geoscienceworld.org/content/32/3/274.abstract

AndrePooh (talk) 12:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

it appears a little earlier. on the mega faunal extinctions i am rather of the human caused kind, if even because humans also burned large areals of forests, and killed animals in unneccesary masses.i dont think that would immediatly impact deep sea organisms. yet on the megafauna there is this: allthough less specialised animals may change in a period of about 100ka, highly specialised herbivores or carnivores could not. animals that first met men, (famous examples, dodo , lemurs, australian animals but if you dig deeper there are plenty stories, even of animal that had at other places had contact with humans, ) tend to not have any fear, which is deadly for herbivores, and not the safest way to deal with a new species for a carnivore either. so whether through overkill, ecological impact, ritual or depletion, the macro fauna had a very bad time. african animals that had been exposed to humans , and co-evolved fare better, still it is a standing tradition, to kill a lion eg. for to "be a man". usually human population density is bigger than is carnivore (..)(btw since it is close to australia..)31.151.163.18 (talk) 00:27, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

About the title "Quaternary extinction event"

Why is this article entitled "Quaternary extinction event"? Search on google scholar yields only 10 (sic!) results; of those, 5 actually uses the phrase "late Quaternary extinction event", and 1 other "end-Quaternary extinction event". But only 3 from those 10 clearly use this phrase to refer to the subject of this article (the wave of extinctions), while the rest refers to some specific "event" that was a part of the wave.

• "Quaternary extinction event" - 10 scholar hits
• "Quaternary extinction events" - 10 scholar hits
• "Pleistocene-Holocene extinctions" - 117 scholar hits.
• "Quaternary extinction" - 370
  • "late Quaternary extinction" - 283
• "Holocene extinctions" - 466 <- a duplicate Wikipedia article
• "Quaternary extinctions" - 2140 scholar hits
  • "late Quaternary extinctions" - 417

--Kubanczyk (talk) 13:49, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

@Kubanczyk:This article is junk if the last few edits I made are any indication. There’s drawings of animals that died out several million years ago. I vote we redirect this URL to the Holocene Extinction article. Dogshu (talk) 23:32, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

@Kubanczyk:I tried to redirect to Holocene extinction but was rebuffed. This article is very low quality, listing animals that died out in the Pliocene if not earlier. I don’t have the time to go through and remove every animal (and animal photos like the Chalicothere) that went extinct before 130,000 years ago. This article lowers the information quality of Wikipedia to English speakers. If you have any extraordinary powers like recommending this article for deletion or redirection, now is the time to use them. Alternatively, how can I formally request this article be deleted? Sorry I’m a newb, but I just want to help make Wikipedia better. Dogshu (talk) 15:30, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Merge with Holocene extinction

There are two articles on the same topic. Holocene extinction — Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.159.62.2 (talk) 19:50, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree, also see the conversation at Talk:Quaternary_extinction_event#About_the_title_"Quaternary_extinction_event" Dogshu (talk) 15:33, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. These extinctions here, were mostly occurring near the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary. The Holocene extinction is ongoing with a stronger onset of the last 200 years. Aruck (talk) 13:54, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Still human predation absurdity...

This article is still filled with the 'TRUTHFUL' hypothesis, the human over-predation/kill. Wow. No better expert here, to remove the utter nonsense present in this one, one of the most silly WP articles?

Then, let's give some hints:

1-What was the only megafauna surely killed 'en masse' in USA?

The bison, right? The only one still alive, i'd say.

2-Why the ASIAN ELEPHANT is still alive, while the northern cousin, the mammouth, was gone thousands years ago? Really, someone is telling that humans weren't capable to kill asian elephants, while they were more than enough to chase and kill any mammouth in the northern emisphere? Really, someone 'advocate' of the overkill can display HOW in a land around 50,000,000 square km (Europe, URSS, USA) a very few hunters killed any proboscidates (mammouth, mastodon, ancient elephants)? While the indian/asian counterparts were 'spared' by humans?

3- the question about the 'african megafauna was evolved with men, so they were adapted to fight them'. Oh, yes. Then, mammouth were surely an honey bottle, after all they had just to survive to smilodon and american lions, or the ancient dire wolves.

4- humans killing the apex predator. Ah-ah-ah. Why they had should do this? Why they could do that? Are you aware, that even in the 'modern times', humans still had not killed stuff like Kodiak, Polar, Grizzly, Cougar and Jaguar, among the others? Why they could have wiped-out the prehistoric beasts, then? modern lions, wolves and bears are dangerous enough to be chased with modern weapons! Do not forget, that when europeans arrived, the american natives were AFRAID to enter in the woods, because the grizzly were too dangerous (see californian bear).

OF course, the Clovis, being equipped with laser swords and machine-guns, titanium body armour and GPS, should have not been afraid, right?

Excuse me for the hirony, but this article needs DEFINITIVELY a very good review.

Ps the australian extintion was not necessarly related with the US mass extinction. Total different situation, timing ecc.

Ps 2 madagascar saw Hepiornys still alive just hundreds years ago

Ps 3 This graphic is even more COMICAL, as it shows absolutely NEITHER EUROPE NOR ASIA! How can it be trusted, then? IT uses just the locations relatively favourable to the human caused extinction!!! Do you realize it? Just deleted TWO CONTINENTS!!! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ad/Extinctions_Africa_Austrailia_NAmerica_Madagascar.gif/300px-Extinctions_Africa_Austrailia_NAmerica_Madagascar.gif188.135.165.160 (talk) 18:01, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I gonna try to answer to the absurdity in the questions of 188.135.165.160:

1: So? Yes, bison survived, and it was not the only one, so did the brown bear and the moose among others. Curiously the same 3 megamammals genus that survived in Europe. That only would prove that these animals, whatever the cause of QME was, were more resistent to that cause than the rest.

2: Asian elephant, in despite of have being for a longer time in contact with Homo species, have not been spared by modern humans at all. Still in times of Roman Empire the animal lived in Siria. It also lived in China, in regions quite to the north from India. Asian megafauna lost a lot both in terms of abundance and diversity. Take a look to this scientific article:

3: I see you don't have any idea of what island tameness is. Go to youtube, compare the reaction of pinguins to leopard seal and to humans, and you'll learn something new today.

4: Read this article and try to understand it, you don't need to be professor of Ecology:

Your comment shows not "hirony", just a pretty big lack of basic knowledges about Biology, Ecology and Overkill hipotesis. I'd advice you to keep (start?) reading scientific articles.

PS1: Australian and American mass extintions are related by a very important link: they affected just to megafauna, something that never happened before the QME. The fact that they happened in different times is a trouble for defensors of climatic change hypotesis, not for the overkill hypotesis, since both mass extintions match indeed with our arrival.

PS2: Exactly, that's pretty much the point, in the islands mass extinsions of megafauna occurred much later than in continents. You never wondered why? In Madagascar, a dozen species of giant lemurs became extinct between 2,000 and less than 400 years ago, when the last of them, the man-sized Megaladapis edwardsi, was seen by the French governor, Etienne de Flacourt (Flacourt, 1658). Flacourt may also have seen the last of the half-ton elephant birds (Aepyornis maximus). When the European colonizers arrived, huge elephant bird eggshells still littered the beaches of the island’s south and south-eastern coasts, pointing to a very recent extinction indeed. Furthermore, Madagascar also lost pigmy hippos and giant fossas (Dewar, 1984). Humans got to the island about 2000 years ago. Another coincidence in your opinion?

PS3: Europe and Asia are not two continents for biologists, are the same one: Eurasia. To better understand why the mass extintions take so long in Eurasia I advice you again to read this article:

When you finished it, you can come back for more. There is plenty of them, including comparative analyzes based on mathematical models. You're welcome. --Cocedi (talk) 20:43, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Greetings for the absurdity

Eurasian Pleistocene megafauna became extinct in roughly same time period despite having a much longer time to adapt to hunting pressure by humans. However, the extinction of the Eurasian megafauna can be viewed as a result of a different process than that of the American megafauna. This makes the theory less parsimonious since another mechanism is required. The latter case occurred after the sudden appearance of modern human hunters on a land mass they had never previously inhabited, while the former case was the culmination of the gradual northward movement of human hunters over thousands of years as their technology for enduring extreme cold and bringing down big game improved. Thus, while the hunting hypothesis does not necessarily predict the rough simultaneity of the north Eurasian and American megafaunal extinctions, this simultaneity cannot be regarded as evidence against it.

SO, when put in America it's good, while Mammouth in Europe weren't so stupid and needed 30,000 years of chase made by modern humans to be extinted? But someone is capable to understand how unbeliable is this paragraph? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.20.209.65 (talk) 02:11, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Many layers of confusion here and among other articles. Perhaps at the center is the Pleistocene/Holocene extinction of Megafauna, a number of large mammal species that may correlate with the end of Clovis culture (their tools) in N America and the beginning of the Younger Dryas cooling event, which may be linked to a catastrophic extraterrestrial impact event that produced the Dark Mat of global extent. Trying to piece together a consistent and independently support chronology of the above is not yet possible, but as time and research moves on and evidence mounts the sudden climate change seems to be correlated with the extinction. Another thing that seems to be clear is that the WP articles need updating to include current evidence of the role of extraterrestrial impact triggering of the Younger Dryas and black mat events focusing on it's Yr and hexagonal micro diamond abundance evidence which could conclusively support the impact hypothesis. It is important that in conceptual terms science is independent of politics and political consensus or other forms of consensus. But as we know from past years people were burned at the stake for supporting a non flat earth and more recently proclaimed heretics for not believe UN documents on current global warming. In the Younger Dryas realm too much emphasis is being placed on the human influences on extinction it seems, particularly with respect to mammoth extinction for example. A map summarizing Mammoth habitat and abundance over the years to extinction and the distribution of humans (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woolly_Mammoth_Climatic_Suitability_-_Nogu%C3%A9s-Bravo_2008.png ) show mammoths ranged geographically far north of humans populations, well out of range of their spears. Climate and resulting habitat reduction seem to be the root of their extinction at least from the compiled map.

With as much incomplete data and emerging evidence swirling around these topics, particularly considering the latest evidence and inconsistencies from the latest technologies and findings(for example 1,2) it would be more interesting and informative to focus on the facts and derived inconsistencies than spontaneous conclusions and half truths in the WP articles AND the scientific literature. In fact since we live in the information age perhaps the Scientific Method needs to be modified to include as formal informed presentation of the inconsistencies raised by the current research findings, beyond the conclusions and recommendations of scientific work and results. Such information would often go far in expediting new research and the next round of human knowledge, which after all, is out dated at the end of each day. Humanity needs the facts not opinions for real progress.

1- http://www.pnas.org/content/105/18/6520.full

2- http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/677046

216.163.204.158 (talk) 18:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Answering contribuition of 216.163.204.158:

as time and research moves on and evidence mounts the sudden climate change seems to be correlated with the extinction.

Another thing that seems to be clear is that the WP articles need updating to include current evidence of the role of extraterrestrial impact triggering of the Younger Dryas

At least ONE reference by any chance, please? Take a look to this one, for example: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 37, L15703, Biophysical feedbacks between the Pleistocene megafauna extinction and climate: The first human-induced global warming? Christopher E. Doughty, Adam Wolf, and Christopher B. Field.

Climate and resulting habitat reduction seem to be the root of their extinction at least from the compiled map.

Sure, if the climate and resulting habitat reduction seem to you the root of wooly mammoth extintion, please explain to us...

Why they dissapeared up to 8000 years before in the continents that in Wrangel and Saint Paul islands if first, island populations had not possibility to make migrations looking for better habitats; second, island populations had less genetic pool to adapt to enviromental changes.

Why extinctions in these islands match with first records of modern humans arrivals.

Why that picky meteorit surprisingly didn't affect to the islands habitats, but destroyed the whole mammoth steppe in the continents.

Why the 31 former ice ages along the Pleistocene didn't kill mammoths if not by that mysterious meteorite that spared two islands from its otherwise, global, catastrophic effects.

it would be more interesting and informative to focus on the facts and derived inconsistencies than spontaneous conclusions and half truths

You probably meant something like this: Climate and resulting habitat reduction seem to be the root of their extinction at least from the compiled map.

You also said:

In fact since we live in the information age perhaps the Scientific Method needs to be modified to include as formal informed presentation of the inconsistencies raised by the current research findings, beyond the conclusions and recommendations of scientific work and results.

If comparative analysis based on mathematical models are good enough for you, I'd recommend you to read the following articles: this one and this one --Cocedi (talk) 21:49, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

References

It seems like, having 'comprehensive refutation' in the title of a paper does not mean that the YDIH has been comprehensively refuted (only that the authors of the paper were very cross) and I've edited that section - I don't honestly know much about the evidence for or against the YDIH, but I happened to see some of the paper by Holliday and a paper published by a Dr Powell in response to it https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383204842_Data_vs_Derision_The_Ethics_of_Language_in_Scientific_Publication_The_Younger_Dryas_Impact_Hypothesis_as_a_Case_Study , and it struck me that it sounds as if the debate has got pretty personal. Wombat140 (talk) 21:51, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Explanation is very simple and obvious. :) Asian and African elephants can run faster than humans. Mammoths were heavier, ran slower than humans, so they were exterminated everywhere by people: 1.5 million years ago in Africa, 500-200 thousand years ago in southern Asia, 12 thousand years ago in arctic Eurasia, etc. Mammoths (and other megafauna) were exterminated everywhere shortly after the settlement of early human, just obviously. BSerg29 (talk) 07:34, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Holocene extinction

My rationale is that there is very poor differentiation between the two pages.

• If the extinction in the Pleistocene is differentiated from the Holocene by time alone (making the cutoff about 10,000 years ago), it becomes debatable as to where to put the 'end' of the Pleistocene extinction, because it pretty much continued from then. There is a great deal of debate as to how much humans contributed to ice age extinctions, but more recent consensus suggests they can be attributable to the spread of Homo sapiens out of Africa (even with minimal hunting pressure), especially in light of more concrete evidence demonstrating mass extinctions following colonisation of NZ, Australia and Madagascar.
• Also, mass extinctions tend to occur over the space of a few million years, and geologically speaking, it would be ridiculous to consider two separate mass extinctions within the space of 1 million years.
• Alternately, you could try splitting them up based on which were caused by humans and which were climactic - but recent consensus suggests in many places they both interacted with each other to cause mass extinctions, with ecosystem modification following megafaunal extinction potentially affecting climate on the other side of the world, causing more extinction. Also, the Australian mass extinction was definitely caused by humans - so it would make sense to put it under 'Holocene' - but it occurred 50,000 years ago, which would timeline wise put it as part of the Quaternary.

I think either more clear separation between the two articles would need to be made, or both should be combined to be a comprehensive article describing the Sixth mass extinction, including extinctions lasting from the end of the ice age up until today. Alternatively, a more general page like Anthropogenic extinction would remove the timeline ambiguity and would allow discussion of both prehistoric and modern mass extinction attributable to humans. Let me know what you think. --Indricotherium (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I support a stonger differentiation, but no merging. These extinctions here, were mostly occurring near the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary. The Holocene extinction is ongoing with a stronger onset of the last 200 years. Aruck (talk) 13:56, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Source repository

For future use, by anyone- delete each one when all useful knowledge is extracted.

The ecological structure of the "Mammoth Fauna" in Eurasia - http://www.jstor.org/stable/23735450?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Human Ecology of Beringia - https://books.google.com.au/booksid=DQkpVuA7_6UC&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=baikal+yak&source=bl&ots=HpIRFS3fT7&sig=bGKtaODYLfKuAMjtOpADnrpqHHs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiz0rOhhqnTAhUHi5QKHSXZANcQ6AEINTAD#v=onepage&q=baikal%20yak&f=false

Terrestrial fluvial landscapes by Danielle Schreve- https://library.thehumanjourney.net/2795/26/Lost%20Landscapes-chapter4%20Terrestrial%20Fluvial%20landscapes.pdf

The Late Pleistocene fauna of Peneiós valley (Lárissa, Thessaly, Greece): new collected material Athanassios ATHANASSIOU- http://users.uoa.gr/~aathanas/CONGRESS/52.pdf

Selected records of Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis (Jäger, 1839) (Mammalia, Rhinocerotidae) in Italy Emmanuel M.E. BILLIA & Carmelo PETRONIO- http://paleoitalia.org/media/u/archives/03_Billia_Petronio.pdf -

The Pleistocene easternmost distribution of the species associated with the Eemian Palaeoloxodon antiquus assemblage, Diana Pushinka - http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/131/1318084071.pdf

Equids from Emine-Bair-Khosar Cave (Crimea, Ukraine) Eline N. van Asperen, Krzysztof Stefaniak, Iurii Proskurnyak, and Bogdan Ridush - http://palaeo-electronica.org/content/pdfs/280.pdf

Equus: an evolution without lineages? Véra Eisenmann - http://www.senckenberg.de/fis/doc/abstracts/25_Eisenmann.pdf

Biostratigraphy of the Upper Pleistocene (Upper Neopleistocene) of the Southern Urals Anatoly Yakovlev, Guzel Danukalova, Eugenija Osipova - http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/136/1365603058.pdf

Late Pleistocene large mammal faunas from the Urals Pavel Kosintsev- http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/139/1393787470.pdf

Johnson 2002 Determinants of loss of mammal species during the Late Quaternary ‘megafauna’ extinctions: life history and ecology, but not body size - http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/suppl/2009/02/12/269.1506.2221.DC1/rspb20022130s01.pdf

First Record of Palaelodus (Aves: Phoenicopteriformes) from New Zealand Trevor H. Worthy, Alan J.D. Tennyson, Michael Archer and R. Paul Scofield)- https://australianmuseum.com/uploads/journals/18086/1545_complete.pdf

Past forests of Europe (H. J. B. Birks, W. Tinner) - http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/media/atlas/Past_forests_of_Europe.pdf

The origin of Eurasian Mammoth Faunas (Mammuthus-Coelodonta Faunal Complex, Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke)- http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/140/1404659577.pdf

SuperTah (talk) 10:44, 26 April 2017 (UTC) ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Climate change hypothesis - a different approach needed

The section on the "Climate change hypothesis" will benefit with a serious update of the research and some integration. Separate subjects of "temperature", "vegetation" and "rainfall" reflect a mutually-exclusive form of thinking in the article at present. All of these variables need to be considered as acting together. It is becoming clear that global warming led to deglaciation and increased precipitation, and increased precipitation led to forestation, wetlands and bogs - none of which support megaherbivores. Extinction was preceded by habitat fragmentation - a term that does not appear once in this article. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 10:05, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Further, there appears to be as many different theories as there are academics who can come up with them. It is past time to stop reflecting WP:PRIMARY sources in this article and move to WP:SECONDARY sourcing - what does informed, over-all analysis tell us?. Additionally, at 223kb this article is WP:TOOBIG and would benefit with a severe prune or WP:SPINOFF of sections. William Harris • (talk) • 22:04, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Hunting Hypothesis

This section like most needs some decent work. I wanted to cite an example the author used but when I finally found the source their statement was exactly incorrect. On top of this there are many other baseless claims. There have been a lot of additions to the climate hypothesis sections because they were lacking but even the hunting hypothesis sections could use the touch of someone more versed in the field than I. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MattQBonner (talk • contribs) 22:19, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Have begun to reorganise

This article was a mess. It is now slightly less of a mess, but still needs a lot of attention, some of it by experts. The division into biogeographical realms makes logical sense but many species are listed in the wrong section, for example the Caribbean and Central American animals should be moved to be in the Neotropic (with South America), not Nearctic (North America). Ideally, someone who knows how to do it would split Afrotropic from Indomalaya, because there is no sensible reason to lump them together. I shall now concentrate on reorganising the Palearctic sections because I know most about them and they interest me.

Agrestis (talk) 14:25, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Clear POV

So the section "for" the hunting hypotheses is a simple lay out of the argument. However, the "against" is bullet pointed with each argument having a "for" counterargument in it? Really? So blatant. 56.0.143.25 (talk) 13:39, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Introduction

The introduction section should be just that, and no more. Details and debates about specific hypotheses belong in their specific sections. So, I deleted non-introductory text from the intro section. If anybody thinks these "darlings" need to be incorporated into other sections, here's what I cut out of the introduction:

We now know that immediately after the extinction of the mammoth, birch forest replaced the grassland and that an era of significant fire began.

Such a scenario has been proposed as a contributing cause of the 1,300-year cold period known as the Younger Dryas stadial. This impact extinction hypothesis is still in debate due to the exacting field techniques required to extract minuscule particles of extraterrestrial impact markers such as iridium at a high resolution from very thin strata in a repeatable fashion, as is necessary to conclusively distinguish the event peak from the local background level of the marker. The debate seems to be exacerbated by infighting between the Uniformitarianism camp and the Catastrophism camp.

This section could still be improved. But not with minutiae.

- Zulu Kane (talk) 14:25, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

References

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Leptoptilos robustus.jpeg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:14, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Do many experts believe that climate change may have been the sole cause?

I don't understand the logic of the way climate change is treated in this article. As is mentioned under the "Climate change hypothesis" section, the Pleistocene climate changes did probably not differ much from earlier interglacials that most megafauna survived. If so, there must have been something else going on in the Pleistocene as well. But the lede and the body is written as if climate change is one of several competing hypotheses of the cause of the extinctions, and as if evidence of climate change weighs against the other hypotheses. Do many experts actually believe this? If yes, I think their reasoning should be explained, possibly in the lede. If they don't say so explicitly, I would rewrite some paragraphs, so the logic of the text as a whole makes more sense. Ornilnas (talk) 01:23, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

OR cleaned

I removed all of the WP:OR and WP:SYNTH in the overhunting hypothesis section that I could locate. This also somewhat resolved the NPOV concerns above; however, one argument against still has a counterargument needs to be moved to the correct section. I also removed some totally unsourced content from another hypothesis, and it is possible that some of there is still OR in this section or others. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:58, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

There is, however, one source I am still unsure about, since it's unclear if the source is relating the archaeological find to the overkill hypothesis:

Additionally, biochemical analyses have shown that Clovis tools were used in butchering horses and camels.
— Removed in Special:Diff/1122991133

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 03:07, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Moving to Quarternary extinction

Last year, I moved the article to Quarternary extinction, arguing that the title gives the impression that this was a single event rather than a process, as the article itself explains. I also referred to the earlier section #About the title "Quaternary extinction event". This summer, someone reverted the move without any substantial arguments. Is anyone actually against moving to Quarternary extinction? Best, Tolanor (talk) 17:23, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

That someone was me. As much as I appreciate your reasoning, the move was not done with consensus. Particularly with the history of this article, that would have been appropriate. Additionally, my issue with changing the name is that the precedent is to refer to these mass extinctions as "extinction events". This is mostly followed on Wikipedia, with the Capitanian mass extinction event, Permian–Triassic extinction event, Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, and Eocene–Oligocene extinction event articles. To be fair, Quaternary extinction could be like the Late Ordovician mass extinction, Late Devonian extinction & Holocene extinction articles. That QEE may not have many pings on Google Scholar is also worth consideration. Ultimately though, being an extinction event does not mean that a mass extinction is not also a process, as evidenced by the most of the extinctions represented above. SuperTah (talk) 13:50, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

The problem behind making this article entirely about a period (Quaternary) instead of geological time within an epoch (late Pleistocene)

I've touched upon reasons that I've demoted the quality grade of this article to start tier in edit notes, but I haven't touched upon the problem in making this article about the entire Quaternary period instead of having a specific focus like late Pleistocene. The biggest problem with this article is that the geological time periods within the Pleistocene do not have as unified of extinction causes, that the early Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions are grouped with the notable late Pleistocene extinction events. As a result, it is very easy to confuse genera extinctions with different time periods because there are no specifications for their geological times of last appearances based on land formations.

This article needs to be narrower in epoch and geological scale to be more effective and to reduce the necessary size of the article - I propose renaming this article and limiting the genera extinctions within the latest geological time periods of the late Pleistocene - this means the Rancholabrean of North America, Lujanian of South America, or Calabrian of Europe for instance. This means limiting this article to 200,000 to 10,000 years ago generally, although these restrictions could be loosened by a couple thousand more - it should not touch the middle Pleistocene or middle Holocene however. Extinctions of early-middle Pleistocene or the Holocene should be eliminated with very few exceptions (Mammuthus primigenius can be included because it's a prehistoric extinction shortly after Pleistocene but not Archaeolemur or moa for instance - leave those to the Holocene extinction page). Continental species extirpations should also be eliminated because the species is removed from a continent but is still extant in a different continent, contrary to the definition of extinct - this means removing dholes or spotted hyenas because the species is still extant by definition, just not as widespread in range (subspecies extinction can be tricky though).

Emphasizing the first appearances in addition to the last appearances of a species or genus by geological scale would also be quite useful - some genera have arrived to certain continents later than other, which can illustrate how long they've existed.

This article has plenty of problems and I doubt this article can easily be improved at all (overkill vs. gradual climate vs. sudden climate vs. diseases vs. mixed, lack of geological time scale mentions) - but I think making the focus of this article narrower would help. PrimalMustelid (talk) 20:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I concur that this article is a total mess, why the fuck is Hippopotamus gorgops listed for example? The extinctions should be limited to those that have occured within the last 50,000 years. The whole article needs to be thrown out and completely rewritten. User:Hemiauchenia 18:43, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree too. I see no reason to include middle Pleistocene extinctions. This article should only be about extinctions that happened within the last 50000 years. 24.150.121.149 (talk) 21:37, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Holocene extinctions

I noticed when going over the list that there are a lot of holocene extinctions included (like the malagasy lemurs, elephants birds etc). Should these be included? Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:57, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

No, those should not be included since those were generally island extinctions which occurred long after the Pleistocene-Holocene extinctions, independent of climatic events and/or early Homo continental dispersal events that impacted mainland faunas (most notably in Europe and Africa where extinction causes were basically the result of such), and other extinction pages such as recently extinct birds or the Holocene extinction event should cover for those extinctions. We do need a title change to "Late Pleistocene - Early Holocene extinctions," but perhaps that's for another day (Pleistocene and early Holocene extinction pages are such huge messes). PrimalMustelid (talk) 11:59, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@PrimalMustelid: If you're removing the Holocene stuff you may as well remove the Hawaiian and Canary Islands species as well. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:11, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Done, they are removed from the page. PrimalMustelid (talk) 00:23, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Separating Afrotropic and Indomalayan sections

I think combining these sections only serves to confuse the reader. There are also some taxa like Pelorovis that probably didn't make it into the Late Pleistocene that need to be removed as well. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Another way of organizing these articles?

The Late Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions differ not only in timing, but also in mechanism - the first one is correlated with (and likely caused by) the early dispersal of genus Homo, while large-scale exploitation and industrialization are responsible for the second one. It makes sense to have this be a "guideline" to sort out the content of these two articles, and to move this one to Late Pleistocene extinction event, with Quaternary extinction being (if it is needed) a summary article talking about both from a broader perspective (assuming we have enough notable sources treating them as two pulses of a wider extinction event). Chaotic Enby (talk) 09:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

About the late Pleistocene extinctions, yeah I think I should discuss a bit about the "event" as explained within Eurasia. The genus did originate in Africa approximately 2.5 Ma at least then spread during to Eurasia, and the old model of overkill theory suggests that with each continent that Homo spread in, more macromammals died out, suggesting that the genus was the primary cause of extinctions. But this is actually a misconception in the modern day which I think is the result of people confusing continental ecosystems with island ecosystems, the former which can endure mammal dispersals at least a fair amount compared to the latter as shown by paleontological evidence of the Palaeogene and Neogene periods, the turnovers generally correlating more towards climatic + tectonic forcing rather than faunal dispersals alone.

The earliest evidence of Homo dispersals were that of the species Homo erectus, which dispersed from Africa into Asia from about 1.9 Ma to 1.4 Ma and from Southwest Europe to Central and Western Europe from ~1.39 to 0.9 Ma. The result of such dispersals seemed to have occurred from the species seemingly seeking avoidance of carnivores from the African continent after the mammalian fauna had already experienced a faunal turnover resulting from the glacial cycles from the “Late Pliocene climate crush," in which grasslands replaced mesic woodlands and expanded towards south-eastern Eurasia [1] As far as I'm aware, there's no extinction event that occurred from the earlier spreads of Homo to Eurasia. Unfortunately, it's difficult for researchers to understand when exactly other Homo lineages appeared, but it is suggested that Homo heidelbergensis occupied at least Africa and western Eurasia as early as the Middle Pleistocene, which is basically younger than 1 Ma (there is also evidence for Homo occupation in eastern Eurasia, but what species the remains belong to remain uncertain). [2] As for Homo neanderthalensis, the species may have appeared in Europe as early as 430,000 years ago, suggesting that their appearance may be the result of early population divergences between them and the Denisovans during that time. The earliest evidence of human hunting of proboscideans was as early as the 125,000 year-old remains of Palaeoloxodon antiquus, proving that Homo did indeed hunt them during that time. [3] Palaeoloxodon antiquus itself actually was also a disperser during the Middle Pleistocene, having dispersed to Europe and replacing Mammuthus meridionalis (southern mammoth) then coexisting with M. trongontheri (steppe mammoth) and M. primigenius (woolly mammoth) from at least the Early Pleistocene. M. trongontheri went extinct by the Middle Pleistocene. However, it should also be noted that the two genera rarely overlapped due to Palaeoloxodon preferring forest environments and Mammuthus preferring steppe environments. [4] This seems to suggest that both Palaeoloxodon and Mammuthus coexisted with Homo for a long time, so it's insanely unlikely that Homo abruptly chose to hunt them to extinction in the late Pleistocene.

Evidence of the late Pleistocene suggests that the extinctions in Europe and northern Asia were not of a single extinction event but actually three. The first extinction wave targeted temperate forest fauna (Hippopotamus amphibius, Palaeoloxodon antiquus, Stephanorhinus hemitoechus, and Homo neanderthalensis) as well as the comparatively highly specialized dry steppe rhinocerotid Elasmotherium sibiricum prior to 35,000 years ago, which correlates well with the onset of the Last Cold Stage. The earliest presence of Homo sapiens dates to less than 48,000 years ago in Europe, so there can technically be some "correlation" with the extinction of the warm temperate fauna, but given that the steppe fauna thrived and expanded as a result of the onset, it doesn't seem likely that they were the direct cause. The 2nd extinction wave occurred on the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum: Crocuta crocuta spelaea and some ursids such as Ursus spelaeus, the latter of which were confined to Europe. The last occurred during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition where the last glacial cycle was ending, which affected mainly steppe fauna of Eurasia with the exception of Megaloceros giganteus: Coelodonta antiquitatis, and Panthera spelaea. Mammuthus primigenius abruptly went extinct from most of Eurasia approximately 13.8 ka, although smaller populations survived as island populations above Siberia until later in the Holocene. They weren't the only mammals affected either, as other steppe fauna that are still extant, Vulpes lagopus (Arctic fox), Rangifer tarandus (reindeer), Saiga tatarica (saiga), and Ochotona pusilla (steppe pika), were all extirpated from certain regions in Eurasia and never recovered beyond their former ranges.[5] [6] [7]. And as I said in earlier edits, extinctions in southern Asia were minor similar to Africa, with an example being the extinction of Stegodon being from late Pleistocene changes from C₄ plants to C₃ plants that it was unable to adapt to while Elephas maximus (the Asian elephant) lived during that time and is still extant. [8]

So in my opinion, calling it a single extinction event is extremely misleading and inaccurate because it is clear that climatic changes of the late Pleistocene clearly played a larger role in extinctions and extirpations of Eurasia and Africa than did overkill, although H. sapiens in reaction to such climatic changes can't be ruled out yet either, whereas the overkill theory can be stronger in the Americas and Australia but has additionally factored climatic changes into the equation rather than pure overkill. As I've stated earlier, the European extinctions were quite gradual in comparison to North America, so it should really be called "Late Pleistocene extinctions" rather than a name calling it an "extinction event." It is also not necessary to create a "Quaternary extinction event" page because not only is that too difficult and easily able to be disorganized, but the factors leading to island extinctions and modern-day extinctions are quite different in context. And following the logic of that, we should also make extinction event pages of the Paleogene and Neogene, since there's strong evidence of extinction events such as the Eocene-Oligocene transition (of the Paleogene) of Europe where entire families endemic to Europe went extinct or declined drastically, none of which survived past the middle Miocene, but in practice, making extinction pages of entire periods or epochs is difficult in practice since the circumstances of climatic events and faunal turnovers in different times in different continents clearly vary similar to extinctions in the Quaternary period. Anyways, that's my take on this based on research. PrimalMustelid (talk) 12:10, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Again, I wasn't suggesting that the overkill theory was necessarily correct. You rightfully point out that mammoths (both Paleoloxodon and Mammuthus) coexisted with humans for a long time, but that doesn't take into account the factors of growing human technological development, leading to a stronger influence on the ecosystem as technological progress went on. [9] It isn't "insanely unlikely" that, as the Pleistocene ended and humans began to form their first large-scale settlements, their presence became more disruptive than before to the elephantid populations in the area. Furthermore, multiple theories have been suggested pointing at a more indirect role of humans in Late Pleistocene extinctions - often supported by dynamical models, like the second-order predation theory, [10] or anthropogenic landscape transformation.

Another point that I never saw adressed is the relative regularity of interglacial cycles. When "drastic" climate change is brought up, often in referrence to the Younger Dryas, it isn't put in perspective with the previous interglacial periods, with often similarly drastic change. However, megafauna survived these without noticeable issues, casting doubt on the responsibility of climate change alone.

Finally, your argument that this is analogous to creating extinction event pages for the Paleogene or the Neogene is very inaccurate. The Quaternary is, compared to all other periods, anomalously short - only 2.5 million years, while other periods range from 20 to 75 million years. This period is uniquely defined by the Quaternary glaciation and human dispersal across the globe, which are exactly the factors argued as being the causes of the extinctions. Plus, there is a precedent with the Late Devonian extinction, grouping two separate main pulses (Kellwasser event and Hangenberg event) into a single extinction trend. This doesn't seem to be done consistently (contrast the Capitanian mass extinction event being separated from the Great Dying), but there are many references to "Late Quaternary extinctions", at least partially caused by humans, of which the Holocene extinction is a continuation. [11] [12] (these sources also support the correlation between human arrival in the New World/Australia and megafaunal extinctions there, as well as a lack of correlation between climate change intensity and rates of extinction) Chaotic Enby (talk) 13:34, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Something I should've elaborated on earlier is my thought on the late Pleistocene-early Holocene extinctions as not a single extinction event but either pulses or multiple gradual extinctions, in which the environmental and climatic contexts in Eurasia and Africa are not the same as Australia and the Americas. I am not at all denying that the presence of Homo sapiens did not affect their environments because implying that they didn't impact them would be blatantly false, what I am saying is that they and/or climatic changes shouldn't be read as the single dominating cause that has led to a "single" extinction event. For long-term/"permanent" human settlement to occur (unless your definition of "settlement" includes hunting-gathering nomadism) should imply that humans had practiced agricultural crop growth and domestication of livestock, for then hunting-gathering should not be as necessary a practice (and not everyone settled either still, Central Asia is a prominent example of historic nomadism), but cultivation of crops didn't even begin until ~11,700 years ago in the Middle East or ~8,000 years ago in China. [13] How would permanent settlement practices lead to the extinctions in Australia ~50,000 years ago (potential anthropogenic fire would be the more likely factor considering indigenous Australians weren't exactly known for agriculture or domestication of livestock) or the extinctions/extirpations of temperate forest fauna of Europe ~40k years ago plus the steppe faunas of ~20,000-12,000 years ago if they only started occurring in the Middle East hundreds of years after the extinctions/extirpations of the steppe fauna of most of Eurasia? Agriculture only arrived to SE Europe 8,500 years ago, so permanent settlement practices wouldn't be the cause of the Pleistocene extinctions. [14] This is consistent with what Wikipedia defines as the Neolithic Revolution, which occurred after said Eurasian extinctions. Agriculture did begin in North America ~10,000 years ago, sure, but it was at its earliest stage and probably would've occurred once the megafauna were dying out, not the other way around. [15] There are likely anthropogenic changes like, as I said, habitat clearance, but permanent settlement was not really one of them. I'm not sure that the first source you linked mentions the extinctions of megafauna of the Pleistocene correlating with increasing human technological development when it cites hypotheses relating to climatic hypotheses, overkill hypotheses, and hypotheses such as drought, diseases, and anthropogenic fire. [16]

Now if you're referring to hunting practices and habitat clearance, yes, that certainly could have pressured faunal populations, especially macromammals. However, said circumstances are quite different by continent, especially comparing Africa and Eurasia to North America. According to the second source you linked:

"At the end of the Pleistocene, there were significant climate changes and, following the appearance of Homo Sapiens on each major continent, significant megafaunal extinctions.

The leading extinction theories, climate change and overkill, are inadequate. Neither explains why: (1) browsers, mixed feeders and non-ruminant grazer species suffered most, while ruminant grazers generally survived, (2) many surviving mammal species were sharply diminished in size; and (3) vegetative environments shifted from plaid to striped (Guthrie, 1980.)

Nor do climate change theories explain why mammoths and other megaherbivores survived changes of similar magnitude." [17]

North America has a clearly different environment with different circumstances of survival and extinction, which in part explains why the extinctions in the Americas were much greater. We know this because his evidence and information are both on North America based on a figure's usage of the North American Land Mammal Ages and his description of environmental changes being directly based on the continent. Whereas the end of the Pleistocene saw Pleistocene steppe grazers of Eurasia going extinct and surviving temperate forest faunas of the continents thriving, North America saw the extinction of browsers, mixed feeders, and non-ruminant grazers whereas ruminant grazers survived in the continent. It can be argued that humans had directly greater involvement in North America's extinctions, but the causes cannot automatically be attributed to other areas.

I'm personally not really one to believe in the Younger Dryas theory until there's more solid evidence of such, and as such, I will state once again that the climatic changes observed in Europe were *gradual*. Mammals can survive climatic events, but that doesn't mean that they can't be prone to future effects like population bottlenecks. According to "Patterns of Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions in Europe and northern Asia," after a "contraction of range during part of the Last Glacial Maximum, woolly rhinoceros returned to most areas in the Late Glacial, but failed to recolonize Britain and southern Europe." This suggests that even if they didn't become extinct from previous glacial cycles, they were still severely impacted. They were able to recover to most areas, but they also failed to extend to their former full range.

Let's discuss Camelops of North America as another example. According to one source, dental analyses and stable isotopes both indicate that Camelops "were primarily leaf browsers living in habitats that included substantial trees and shrubs, rather than grazers that occupied open, herbaceous landscapes. Given this ecological constraint, western camels were probably able to disperse northwards into eastern Beringia only during times when warm climates permitted the growth of sufficient browse within boreal forest and shrubby habitats, such as during the Sangamonian interglaciation of MIS 5 (Muhs et al., 2001) or, possibly, earlier interglaciations." The text then states, "However, interglacial occupation of eastern Beringia by western camels was likely terminated abruptly by the transition to the full-glacial conditions of the early Wisconsinan (MIS 4). Stratigraphic and paleoecological data from interior Yukon and Alaska demonstrate that severe cooling and aridification during the MIS 5-4 transition ∼75 000 years ago eliminated widespread interglacial forests and shrub habitats and replaced them with cryo-xeric steppe-tundra." It continues by arguing that such climatic deteriorations would have limited browsing opportunities for small populations of Camelops hesternus, leading to their retreat or extirpation southwards, a case of "over-chill." It additionally argues that its results are quite similar to another North American browser, Mammut americanum, where the glacial cycle ~75,000 years ago caused their extirpations in Beringia. This indicates that at least browsing mammals were quite negatively impacted by climatic changes while grazing mammals thrived under such conditions, which makes North America's large extinctions quite an enigma. [18] [19] Heck, there were even more extreme cases of such negative climatic reactions where Castoroides actually reacted negatively to climatic changes throughout North America to the point where it was extirpated from most regions before humans had even arrived, with small populations being restricted to the Great Lakes Basin region by the time humans settled (and there is no evidence for them exploiting that genus in particular). [20] Certain species definitely reacted better to such climatic events such as grazers like horses and mammoths until the late Pleistocene-early Holocene transition, but I wouldn't be sure that the cases of regional extirpations of browsing or folivorous mammals would translate to "no noticeable issues" even though they survived. Anthropogenic and natural changes both leading to extinction aren't necessarily separate nor can either alone explain everything.

I'm not casting doubt on anthropogenic changes being a primary cause of extinctions in the Americas and Australia, rather that their circumstances do not equate to an entire single extinction event. Even the 3rd source you cited, an article, states that less species went extinct in Africa and Eurasia compared to the Americas and Australia, correlating with ancient-established populations in the Old World continents vs. newer populations in the New World. The 4th source, which favors overkill, even says, "By contrast, only in Eurasia was there a climate change signal." I'm just still not seeing this add up to "one extinction event" considering that the climatic and anthropogenic causes vary by continent, that there isn't quite a unifying primary cause despite the similarities. "Extinctions" or "extinction events" can work, sure, but not "extinction event." PrimalMustelid (talk) 16:12, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Again, we mostly agree, but my reference to the beginning of large-scale settlements was specifically about Eurasia during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (with the species going extinct being, for instance, the various mammoth species). I also definitely agree that climate change likely played a role in Eurasia, although, given previous changes of similar magnitude, it likely had to act in combination with human pressure to some extent. And yes, this represents a separate pulse compared to the previous Eurasian events, or to the American and Australian ones. Chaotic Enby (talk) 08:20, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Mexico and Central America: Placement?

Should Mexican and Central American taxa go in the North America section (as they are geographically part of North America or should they go in the South America section, as they are techically part of the Neotropical Realm? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:33, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Merging "Pleistocene megafauna" into this article

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The current scope of that article greatly overlaps with this one. Well over half of the prose of the "Pleistocene megafauna" article is dedicated to megafaunal extinction, which is the scope of this article. I really do not see a reason for the two articles to be remain separate, unless Pleistocene megafauna is essentially entirely rewritten from the ground up. Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:55, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Leaning Support: While in theory, I can see why it was made a separate page, in its current form, it's better to just merge the article with the Quaternary extinction event article.

• First of all, the concept of a "Pleistocene megafauna" article is extremely broad. Is it supposed to be covering the environments the faunas lived in and such? Because in my opinion, that's something that the Pleistocene epoch article, individual faunal articles, and extinction event articles can and should cover better. In addition, I dislike the concept of making such an article cover only "megafauna" since it often leaves out a lot of the smaller animals from discussion even though we know well that they too have been impacted by major faunal events too even if not as severely (the definition of "megafauna" is very subjective too which is why the term is pretty much never used by non-Quaternary paleontologists). Also, it's not like other geological periods or epochs got their own articles for faunas.
• Second, the Pleistocene megafauna article claims to cover the Pleistocene animals ("Pleistocene megafauna is the set of large animals (megafauna) that lived on Earth during the Pleistocene epoch"), but the problem with that is that a lot of the faunas that lived in the Old World continents during the late Pliocene, early Pleistocene, and to some extent even middle Pleistocene are quite different assuming we follow the 2.5 Ma boundary as the Plio-Pleistocene transition. The early-middle Pleistocene faunas of Europe, Asia, and Africa while having similar faunas to the modern day have different environments and faunas too, such as Eurygnathohippus, Gazellospira, Anancus, Pachycrocuta, Megantereon, Pontoceros, Leptobos, Hemibos, Mitilanotherium, Sivatherium, and so on. A lot of the "classical" Ice Age faunas of the old world continents didn't even appear until the Middle Pleistocene. To cover all these faunal turnovers requires understanding faunal datum events, which hardly anyone has the knowledge of covering. Is the article intending to restrict itself to just the late Pleistocene faunas? If so, it should be renamed to "Late Pleistocene megafauna," and there's another problem.
• Third, the Quaternary extinction event essentially covers already what the other article is trying to cover, since both overlap heavily in covering the late Pleistocene extinction pulses and their potential causes, and I honestly can't see anything that makes the Pleistocene megafauna article stand out.

I think it's too difficult to make an article around only Pleistocene megafauna for those reasons, so I therefore agree with a merge. PrimalMustelid (talk) 18:19, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

• Could it be made into a list? FunkMonk (talk) 18:14, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

  @FunkMonk: can you clarify what you are suggesting? The Quaternary extinction event article is already effectively a list. Given that the precise definition of "megafauna" is contentious, I do not see how a list covering the entire 2.6 million years of the Pleistocene would be workable. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:56, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I meant a Pleistocene megafauna list, as there is already a huge list in this article which seems unnecessary. And if it can't be properly defined, why should it even be here? FunkMonk (talk) 19:00, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

The "Quaternary extinction event" list has pretty clear criteria: Any vertebrate species that became extinct during the Late Pleistocene-early Holocene, whether it counts as megafauna or not. With a "Pleistocene megafauna" list, one would have to make judgements about whether a particular animal qualifies as "megafauna" or not. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:26, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Right. But aren't there pretty clear cut criteria like weight? FunkMonk (talk) 19:39, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

People disagree on what that weight criterion is though. Some people consider anything over 40 kg megafauna [21], others consider the criterion to be 100kg [22] or 1000 kg [23]. It's just too subjective a criterion to base a list on. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 15 December 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) NmWTfs85lXusaybq (talk) 03:10, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

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Quaternary extinction event → Late Pleistocene extinctions – Calling the extinctions of the late Pleistocene-early Holocene a single event has been well-known to be a misnomer when one evaluates extinctions causes of Europe, Africa, and Asia compared to other continents, plus "Late Pleistocene extinctions" appears to be the most common term for the extinction phases according to Google Scholar. It and the Eocene-Oligocene extinction event pages should be moved to new titles for more accurate names. PrimalMustelid (talk) 17:30, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

• Support There are a variety of things this article could be called. "Late Quaternary extinctions" is another close contender , but ultimately this name appears to have the most traction and has the clearest scope Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:38, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Why the laundry list of individual taxa that went extinct?

Why does the first part of this article have a long, exhaustive list of every single animal that went extinct by region during the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction event? I think that these long lists could simply be moved into their own page titled "List of Late Pleistocene extinct megafauna" or something along those lines while keeping the parts that discuss the causes of the extinction by region. Additionally, since the causes and timing of each region's extinctions events are heterogeneous, I think making some region-specific articles that go in-depth into their region while keeping this page as a broad-scoped analysis of the timing, causes, and effects of the Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction event at large. I don't normally support this for pages about extinction events, but given their recentness, their aforementioned heterogeneity, and the fact that we know a great deal about the narrow, specific timeframes of the environmental and human population changes by region and that the extinction pulses of each continent tended to happen during completely different climatic events, I think it's a possible suggestion that deserves some consideration. Anteosaurus magnificus (talk) 02:58, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

There's clearly a need to provide a comprehensive list somewhere, even if it's not necessarily on this page. Let's see what @PrimalMustelid: thinks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

It is definitely necessary to have comprehensive lists for extinctions from the late Pleistocene to the early/middle Holocene, but on the other hand, I wouldn't mind the lists being split off into separate pages. That said, I think that potentially, the lists can be part of separate pages covering faunal restructurings/extinctions by region/continent. We don't need separate list pages if we can just transfer them into regional pages. Having separate pages might actually be ideal since it being one page only has caused misconceptions that the extinctions/faunal restructurings were homogenous in nature. This page can serve as a broad coverage for extinctions within the late Pleistocene but also define the regions as having different causes of extinctions from others, providing links to regional extinctions.

Europe/Northern Asia especially has been needing its own separate page for some time, since the paleontological research behind it is basically its own topic, and its extinction phases have been more clearly defined from exceptional radiocarbon datings and clear trends of proboscidean, artiodactyl, perissodactyl, carnivoran, rodent and lagomorph extirpations or extinctions within the last 50,000 years (compared to the lagging radiocarbon dates of North America, South America, and Australia). There are many recent sources alone discussing glires faunal restructurings within the last 50,000 years such as this source and this one. Such broad and nuanced topics cannot easily be covered in a broad page such as this, so it having its own page and covering faunal turnovers by region within Europe/Northern Asia is quite handy for such niche but important topics where micromammal extinctions within Eurasia are usually heavily underrepresented (main reason why I added that glires list in the first place). Africa and Southern Asia can be covered similarly since the extinction trends are relatively similar to previous Neogene trends of C3-C4 plant and habitat turnovers.

North America, South America, and Australia are much, much more controversial since the extinctions within the continents were more abrupt and more disproportionately affected medium-large sized animals. Whereas there are clear trends of rodent extinctions/extirpations within Europe/Northern Asia at the same times as their megafaunal counterparts, the other aforementioned continents did not have as much small mammal extinctions/range contractions. The shorter human coexistences in particularly are cited to be part of hypothesis involving anthropogenic extinctions within the 3 continents, and there is evidence suggesting stronger hunting cultures in say North America compared to Africa or Eurasia. Although similar in controversies regarding extinctions, there is likely also a need for individual page coverages since the faunal and climatic trends do differ by continent still.

Here's my biggest concern, though: do we *really* have people who are able to cover regional extinctions as their own pages? It seems very easy to mess up by either having redundant information with the main page or misrepresenting extinctions by having them appear less nuanced than they actually are. If you think you're capable of touching such complex topics, I'd be interested, but it's going to be really difficult to do. I cannot help out much unfortunately, as such an area is out of my specialization within Wikipedia.

So in summary, I think having pages for extinctions/turnovers by continent/region can definitely be good if executed well, but if not, it can barebones, redundant, and/or difficult to cover (pinging @Anteosaurus magnificus just to see my response). PrimalMustelid (talk) 05:17, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

"Quaternary extinction event" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Quaternary extinction event has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 August 22 § Quaternary extinction event until a consensus is reached. Isla🏳️‍⚧ 10:29, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Australian aborigine arrival dates

Sorry, but people need to stop referencing the "65kya" figure for the earliest arrival of humans in Australia. That's based on one single outlier site (Madjedbebe) and is not backed up by genetic evidence at all-either at the mitochondrial or nuclear level. Genetic evidence and the vast majority of legitimate archeological sites strongly suggest human arrival very shortly after 50k years ago, perhaps 47-48k.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21416

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1808385115

This needs to be corrected. Megafauna did not overlap within humans for 30,000 years in Australia. PowerfulEdit (talk) 07:08, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

We need sourcing, not your personal thoughts. HiLo48 (talk) 07:35, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Sources have been added to the original comment. PowerfulEdit (talk) 10:33, 30 November 2024 (UTC)