Mammoth Extinction

I watched a show last night that speculated the mammoth was wiped out by a meteor and its affects on its environment. I think that's pretty far fetched.

I think the mammoth was wiped out the same way the Tasmanian Devil is and they way people could have been. Disease. What if the mammal got a version of the Tasmanian contagious cancer of a version of AIDS?

Isn't it easier to believe it got wiped out that way than a meteor?

 

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Hello Orleander, I have two questions for you:
Why is it easier to believe they were wiped out by disease than by a meteor?
What has the ease of belief got to do with the veracity of the hypothesis?

 

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I suppose its easier to believe because I see it happening over and over in recorded history. Black Plague, small pox, AIDS, and thats just in humans who can search for cures. Animals just die.

and as for the second question, sorry, I need that in english.

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Individuals die, true. Do species die out from disease? I don't say it can't happen, or hasn't happened, but so to - it seems - have species become extinct from asteroid impact. So what you have seen has been the death of individuals, but not the death of species. And you have seen the death of species - as in the case of the end of the dinosaurs - from asteroid impact. That ought, by your logic, to make death by asteroid easier to believe.

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Why should how easy it is to believe something have anything at all to do with whether or not it is true? Science doesn't work that way. Therefore just because you find one explanation easier to believe does not in any way make that explanation more likely.

I'm not saying you are wrong in your hypothesis Orleander, I just don't think your arguments in favour of it are convincing, or very scientific. But it is an interesting idea nonetheless.

 

Oh, I'm not arguing that it couldn't have happened, I just think they are reaching. It seems like the meteor theory is whipped out again and again to explain extinctions. Its convenient. A million years down the road, is this what the theory is gonna be about honey bees?
Have they even looked at a disease wiping them out?

 

What meteor event are they talking about...in the last 20000 years? The last event was The Toga extinct event, 80000 YA.

Basically the best explaination is the earth warmed up(reducing their habitat) and they got hunted to death.

 

It was on the National Geographic Channel last night. They said it was witnessed by man, but I have no idea what they are talking about. They also mentioned a human civilization that was wiped out, but I missed that part of it. I had better stuff to do.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/ET/popup/200712122000.html

 

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I don't get civilization channel anymore.

 

I read the blurb - 13,000 years ago - That syncs with Atlantis. I feel my pseudosciencesenses tingling.

 

Oh, that sucks. They also had an awesome hr on that dinosaur mummy they found in North Dakota.

So do you know if there was a civilization wiped out at about the same time as the mammoths? I'm thinking maybe they all starved to death cuz their main food source died.

 

what if a meteor didn't hit the earth, but exploded over it? (do they do that??) That would have affected the environment right? And why do they focus on mammoths so much. What about sabertooths, giant sloths, etc.

 

They can. Frankly they usually cause a nuclear winter type scenario. I guess it depends where they hit, how big it was etc.

Where are they saying it hit?

 

I watched the dinosaur show, watched part of the mammoth show and then...went and did something better. :shy:
So, I don't know. I'll have to watch it again when it comes back on the 16th.

 

The habitat reduction explanation does not explain the long survival of the mammoths - through several rounds of glaciation and interstade - and the apparent presence of suitable habitat even now.

The disease explanation does not explain the complete elimination of all species and populations of mammoths, even those in isolated pockets, quickly and simultaneously. A disease that lethal should burn itself out before reaching farflung and isolated populations, and normally affects different species differently.

Neither explanation accounts for the simultaneous disappearance, with the mammoths, of several dozen species of large mammals and birds from North America. The list is very long, from camels and huge sloths to teratorns and cheetahs.

The hunting explanation, the sudden arrival of humans with highly developed hunting capability not co-evolved with native animal populations, has the advantage of accounting for the species distribution and timing of the extinctions, as well as matching similar well-documented events elsewhere (New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Madagascar, etc).

But some have questioned the hunting explanation for some of the extinct animals, on grounds of feasibility: Many mammoths, for example, lived in environments difficult for humans to maintain large populations in by nomadic hunting. These mammoths were by inference highly intelligent animals, as all surviving elephants are, capable of social adaptation to a new hazard. No one herds elephants off cliffs. And the humans did not have then, as the Plains Indians did to follow the buffalo in large numbers, horses (the native horses went extinct about this time).

The horses are another example. And the cheetahs? We can understand how the development of settled towns and agriculture could have depopulated the surroundings of large game, as happened later in the well-watered forests of the east, but wiping out the horses from the foothills of the Rockies?

So the discovery of a meteor impact - or a couple of them - at just the right time and place, provides a likely major piece of the puzzle. It would have been postulated long ago, had there been an obvious crater or something.

The field prejudice in normal science, btw, is not in favor of meteors. If you advance a meteor as an explanation, you have to make your case very well.

 

I'm sortoff guessing it was all those reasons at ones that finally did them, overhunting changing enviroment and finally deseases.

I'm also guessing that their so popular because their one of the few extinct giants that aren't fossilised and their sort of cudly anyway PR does the rest.

 

The object is supposed to have struck the Laurentide Iceshelf. The shelf is estimated to have been three kilometers thick and would have absorbed and dispersed much of the impact at the time, reducing or eliminating any crater. In addition to producing the expected collision results (shockwave, debris, fire, etc.) melting of the ice sheet could have sent a flood of fresh water into the Atlantic. This influx could have shut down the thermohaline conveyor.

Even if it did not immediatley wipe about the large fauna it could have pushed their numbers below the threshold for a sustainable breeding population. Combine that with drastic climatic changes and you have a recipie for extinction.

The hunting theory is popular among environmentalist the suscribe to the "bad human" theory but realisticallly it is highly improbable the human population was large enough to effect all the species involved simultaneously.

Disease as a causal factor is intriguing but the are some problems with the scenario. First - you would need multiple pathogens. Although it can happen under certain conditions, diseases do no commonly jump genera and we have everything from elephants to birds dying out. Second - Any disease that spreads rapidly and is one-hundred percent fatal would fail to propogate through the species. It might eleminate a specific herd but when the last animal died the spead of the disease would stop. In all likelyhood some individuals would have a natural immunity and pass that to their offspring. Third there is no evidence of a similar transfer of diseases and accompanying extinctions from the "new" world to the "old" world. Berigia was not a one way landbridge.

As to the civilization that was destroyed, the researchers were refering to the Clovis hunting culture. No-one implied the existence of anything like Atlantis.

 

Wow. Welcome to the board and thanks for the post. Flood myth explained??

 

Thank you!!
I missed that part. Did you see the natl Geographic episode?? Not that you needed to to know this.

 

A Map of All the Asteroids Surrounding Earth.

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/InnerPlot.html


Asteroids can burn up before hitting the ground but the trail of debris and

gas that hits the Earth is allot worse sometimes than an actual strike.

 

I watched the show and have read numerous articles concerning this theory and the competing theories. I've also run across a theory that humans were not able to populate the Americas untill the decline of the Small Faced Bear because it was such a fierce predator and humans were reduced to Small Faced Bear snack food.