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A plan for reintroducing megafauna to North America
October 03, 2006Dozens of megafauna (large animals over 100 pounds) - such as giant tortoises, horses, elephants, and cheetah - went extinct in North America13,000 years ago during the end of the Pleistocene. As is the case today in Africa and Asia, these megafauna likely played keystone ecological roles via predation, herbivory, and other processes. What are the consequences of losing such important components of America's natural heritage?
In the November issue of The American Naturalist, a group of 12 ecologists and conservationists provide a detailed proposal for the restoration of North America's lost megafauna. Using the same species from different locales or closely related species as analogs, their project "Pleistocene Rewilding" is conceived as carefully managed experiments in an attempt to learn about and partially restore important natural processes to North American ecosystems that were present for millennia until humans played a significant role in their demise 13,000 years ago.
"Over the past 30 years, more and more evidence suggests that if we lose large animals from ecosystems, they often collapse and biodiversity, along with society, are the ultimate losers," says Josh Donlan (Cornell University). "For millions of years, large animals were the norm all over the world we should start thinking about reintroducing these large animals and restoring these important processes back to ecosystems."
Starting with giant tortoises and wild horses, then moving toward lions and elephants, the authors provide a number of case studies for "Pleistocene Rewilding" and argue such introductions would contribute biological, economic, and cultural benefits to North America. The authors acknowledge that there are substantial risks and challenges; the risks of inaction may be even greater, however, including the continued global loss of megafauna.
University of Chicago Press Journals
Starting with giant tortoises and wild horses, then moving toward lions and elephants, the authors provide a number of case studies for "Pleistocene Rewilding" and argue such introductions would contribute biological, economic, and cultural benefits to North America. The authors acknowledge that there are substantial risks and challenges; the risks of inaction may be even greater, however, including the continued global loss of megafauna.
University of Chicago Press Journals
Megafauna Current Events and Megafauna News RSSEndangered sawfish focus of national collection and recovery efforts
The University of Florida, keeper of the world's shark attack records, is also now overseeing a national records collection for another toothy marine predator: the sawfish.
New evidence implicates humans in prehistoric animal extinctions
Research led by UK and Australian scientists sheds new light on the role that our ancestors played in the extinction of Australia's prehistoric animals. The study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, provides the first evidence that Tasmania's giant kangaroos and marsupial 'rhinos' and 'leopards' were still roaming the island when humans first arrived.
Extraterrestrial Impact Likely Source of Sudden Ice Age Extinctions
At the end of the Pleistocene era, wooly mammoths roamed North America along with a cast of fantastic creatures - giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, camels, lions, tapirs and the incredible teratorn, a condor with a 16-foot wingspan.
Research team says extraterrestrial impact to blame for Ice Age extinctions
What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home.
Seal rookeries could provide a reliable food source for endangered California condors, study finds
A team of scientists is proposing that endangered California condors raised in captivity be released near seal and sea lion rookeries so that the birds can once again feast on the carcasses of marine mammals as their ancestors did centuries ago.
Cornell conservationists propose allowing wild animals to roam parts of North America
If Cornell University researchers and their colleagues have their way, cheetahs, lions, elephants, camels and other large wild animals may soon roam parts of North America.
Small species back-up giant marsupial climate change extinction claim
Thinking small in a time when everything was big has helped Queensland researchers to unearth new evidence that climate change, instead of humans, was responsible for wiping out Australian giant marsupials or megafauna 40,000 years ago.
Madagascar`s lost wilderness @ the London `Catastrophes` conference
In the last 2000 years Madagascar has lost its entire endemic megafauna. This includes giant lemurs, pygmy hippos, elephant birds, and giant tortoises. This loss is the planet`s most recent prehistoric extinction event affecting a region with continental-scale diversity.
More Megafauna Current Events and Megafauna News Articles
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American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene (Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology) by Gary Haynes (Editor) The volume contains summaries of facts, theories, and unsolved problems pertaining to the unexplained extinction of dozens of genera of mostly large terrestrial mammals, which occurred ca. 13,000 calendar years ago in North America and about 1,000 years later in South America. Another equally mysterious wave of extinctions affected large Caribbean islands around 5,000 years ago. The coupling of these extinctions with the earliest appearance of human beings has led to the suggestion that foraging humans are to blame, although major climatic shifts were also taking place in the Americas during some of the extinctions. The last published volume with similar (but not identical) themes -- Extinctions in Near Time -- appeared in 1999; since then a great deal of innovative, exciting new... |
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National Geographic Prehistoric Mammals by Alan Turner (Author) |
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Megafauna by Yoga Understand this: Yoga dispenses a sinister frailty of howling swells in hissing static that combusts into crawling shock heaps, to the effect of Mayhem performing Twin Peaks incidentals in a prairie recorded by The KLF. A brief description casts them as black metal's answer to Throbbing Gristle. The texture-based rendering of their compositions sails them on a strange sea between song and sound effect as it bobs along the waves like a dead man's bottled message. Aspects of Goblin rehearsals in dead hills is interrupted as Monster Zero carves mountain sides with lightning breath. Oscillating leads pummel into churning riffs as if Caledonia was performed in an echo chamber near Lodi, New Jersey. The extrinsic properties of this work may result in disambiguation. |
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Michael Swanwick's Field Guide to Mesozoic Megafauna by Michael Swanwick (Author), Stephanie Pui-Mun Law (Illustrator) This latest collection from renowned science fiction author Michael Swanwick contains 15 short-short stories on dinosaur themes. These dinosaurs are steely bureaucrats, genetically engineered Christmas toys, and beloved killer pets, clashing with immoral scientists, neighborhood bullies, and society ladies with dangerous, sometimes moving, and wickedly funny consequences. This is a companion volume to Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures. |
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American Megafauna by Sierra Madre Games A quarter of a billion years ago, four legged survivors of a global catastrophe cautiously left their watery homes for the shores. There were two basic types, the reptiles and the mammals. Over the ages, they mutated and matured, and always struggling with each other for dominion. The reptiles were the clear leaders for 170 million years, only to be upset by mammals for the last 80 million years. Yet the race for supremacy is not over. Each player takes 1 of four primitive species, called arch-types. As the ages go by, players bid on DNA and genotype cards to mutate their species into more advanced animals. The goal is to raise a species that not only can survive the harsh new world, but to thrive and expand. Game includes rules and historical commentary. Excellent... |
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Twilight of the Mammoths:: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (Organisms and Environments) by Paul S. Martin (Author) As recently as 11,000 years ago--"near time" to geologists--mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age. Part paleontological adventure and part memoir, Twilight of the Mammoths presents in detail internationally renowned paleoecologist Paul Martin's widely discussed and debated "overkill" hypothesis to explain these mysterious megafauna extinctions. Taking us from Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon, where he finds himself "chest deep in sloth dung," to other important fossil sites in Arizona and... |
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Ice Age Mammals of North America by Ian Lange (Author), illustrator Dorothy S. Norton (Illustrator) The time is the Pleistocene epoch, about 2 million to 10,000 years ago. Continent-size ice sheets cover 30 percent of the earth's landmass, and strange creatures rove the landscape. Ice Age Mammals of North America transports you to the world of saber-tooth cats, woolly mammoths, four-hundred-pound beavers, and twenty-foot-tall ground sloths. Illustrated descriptions of the animals form the heart of the book and the final chapter explores why so many of these animals were extinct by the end of Pleistocene time. |
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Megafauna Yoga (Primary Contributor) |
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Prehistoric Giants: The megafauna of Australia by Danielle Clode (Author) | |
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Prehistoric America ~ From the Ice Age to Manhattan From the icy, arctic wastes of Alaska and Canada to the steamy, tropical swamps of Florida North America is a vast and mysterious terrain. But 14,000 years ago when the first humans set foot on the continent the land was foreign to the way we see it today. Travel back in time to the end of the last ice age and see for yourself what this strange landscape looked like and which creatures called it home. Using clues from the present and artifacts from the past, scientists reconstruct prehistoric North America and document its wildlife as experienced by the earliest human colonizers. While the Ice Age strangled much of North America, the deep South offered a refuge for an extraordinary diversity of wildlife. Observe the hunting techniques of a pack of jaguars, as they stalk tapirs and... |
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