Exhibit A: Fossils indicated many, many species of large mammals living in North and South America before the arrival of human beings.
Exhibit B: Lack of fossils indicating the absence of such many, many species of large mammals after the arrival of human beings, strongly suggesting that we came, we saw and then we kicked some giant sloth ass.
Exhibit C: Lots of alternate hypotheses from scholars including asteroid strikes, climate change.
Exhibit D: New research out of the University of Wisconsin shows another take.
This article has some interesting moments. Specifically, the way the team gathered the data involved measuring levels of spores that would have been deposited as part of animal dung and looking at things like the growth of oak forests, which were made possible by the disappearance of large grazers. That is an interesting thought. The truly "wild and untouched" North America may have looked entirely different from the one first encountered by European settlers. In other words, the extinction caused the climate change, not vice versa. The dating of the fossils show that the animals were extinct before the asteroid in question hit and also before the arrival of the Clovis culture. However, butchered mammoth remains in Wisconsin remain a wrench in the gears.
Exhibit B: Lack of fossils indicating the absence of such many, many species of large mammals after the arrival of human beings, strongly suggesting that we came, we saw and then we kicked some giant sloth ass.
Exhibit C: Lots of alternate hypotheses from scholars including asteroid strikes, climate change.
Exhibit D: New research out of the University of Wisconsin shows another take.
This article has some interesting moments. Specifically, the way the team gathered the data involved measuring levels of spores that would have been deposited as part of animal dung and looking at things like the growth of oak forests, which were made possible by the disappearance of large grazers. That is an interesting thought. The truly "wild and untouched" North America may have looked entirely different from the one first encountered by European settlers. In other words, the extinction caused the climate change, not vice versa. The dating of the fossils show that the animals were extinct before the asteroid in question hit and also before the arrival of the Clovis culture. However, butchered mammoth remains in Wisconsin remain a wrench in the gears.
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