What killed the mammoths, giant sloths, sabretooth tigers, etc.?

Originally posted by Produkt
Could you please post some exerpt's from the book, name's, a little more to work with so we can look this stuff up abit easier and learn more about it? It's alot better then saying gee it's too bad you guy's didn't read the book.

If I owned the book I could, but alas, I read it about ten years ago, and am no longer in touch with the fellow I borrowed it from. There are some links above though which support the theory. I did post the full names and even a short bio of the authors in the original post, if you missed it.
As for the mammoths, Byrd is correct as far as I know, mammoths have been found to have died in a large range of years. But, as of approximately 11 500 years ago, a large number of animals became extinct. The previous deaths are notable, but not related to the event I am supporting.
Another finding that is hard to otherwise explain is the mounds of organic matter, both flora and fauna, smashed and piled together as a single mass, which have been found in the far north and date from that same era. Besides a cataclysm, what else would cause this kind of conglomeration of mammoth bones, tree branches, etc. to be broken up and thrown together? There are also similarly busted up bits forcibly jammed deep into crevices within caves, which apparently led to the term 'cave bear', due to some of these finds.

Also, the lack of human genetic diversity point is another piece of supporting data. Though it could be otherwise accounted for, the geneticists themselves seem to support the 'pinching' off of the global homo sapiens sapiens population down to a few tens of thousands in number within the last 10 to 40 000 years approximately.

Originally posted by The Vagabond
The nice thing about global cataclysms (if there is a "nice thing" about them) is that they're really big, so often there is evidence to be found. A layer of volcanic ash, a layer of irridium, an impact crator, different atmospheric composition in icecores, certain types of animals affected most, etc.

Exactly, and the book lists the copious evidence, the C14 datings of it, and also explains the state of the strata in which it was found. They found that there was indeed a layer at that point in the strata which invariably contained charred material, all around the world. The crater point is also addressed, and they point to hundreds of smaller, parallel oriented ones rather than one large one. There are pictures of these in the book, and if I recall, they show a major meteorite shower coming out of the northwest. This direction is the same one that is supported by the finds of mashed up and deeply jammed cave crevice material.

Originally posted by BlackGuardXIII

As for the mammoths, Byrd is correct as far as I know, mammoths have been found to have died in a large range of years. But, as of approximately 11 500 years ago, a large number of animals became extinct.

Correct, many of the megafauna of N America, Eurasia and S America did become extinct within a geologically short period of time - coincidending with climatic changes at the end of the last Glacial coupled with the rapid spread of humans across Eurasia and the Americas. However, not all mega fauna became extinct and some species became extinct only in some parts of the world (the horse and camel became extinct in N America but not Asia, for example, and the Bison, Auroch, Caribou, Polar Bear etc also survived) and none in Africa or Southern Asia became extinct at that time, whist the Australian megafauna died out some 20,000 years earlier (coincidently around the time humans arrived on the scene...)

Another finding that is hard to otherwise explain is the mounds of organic matter, both flora and fauna, smashed and piled together as a single mass, which have been found in the far north and date from that same era. Besides a cataclysm, what else would cause this kind of conglomeration of mammoth bones, tree branches, etc. to be broken up and thrown together?

aka Alaskan Muck. As mentioned in my 'Mammoth Myths' article I linked to before, this appears to have been the result of post glacial flooding. Locally catastrophic, but not evidence for a global event.

Also, the lack of human genetic diversity point is another piece of supporting data. Though it could be otherwise accounted for, the geneticists themselves seem to support the 'pinching' off of the global homo sapiens sapiens population down to a few tens of thousands in number within the last 10 to 40 000 years approximately.

The last gentic bottleneck is actually dated to around 70-75,000 years ago and is believed to have been a result of the Mount Toba supervolcano eruption.

www.bradshawfoundation.com...

There is no evidence for a reduction in human populations around 11,500 years ago - if anything the opposite occurred as we spread to new parts of the wolrd.


For what it's worth my own belief is that the end of the last Glacial - as was undoubtably the case at the end of previous Glacials - saw widespread, massive, flooding across much of North America and Eurasia due to the rapid melting of huge ice sheets and the breaching of ice dams holding back glacial lakes etc. There is plentiful evidence for this - such as the east Washington Scablands, formed by outpourings from Glacial Lake Missoula and the Altai Flood.

These floods would have decimated animal populations - especially larger, migratory herd animals, which may have had limited distribution whilst migrating and also breed slowly. In the past they had, mostly, recovered and thus few extinctions occurred. However, this time, a new predator was on the scene: man. And this was just enough to tip the balance.... simple as that


Edit: to correct url

[edit on 9-3-2006 by Essan]

[edit on 9-3-2006 by Essan]

Essan has it right Blackguard- there are explanations short of global cataclysm in the popular sense.

First of all though, let's nail down the word cataclysm, because it's a loaded, somewhat sensationalist word these days.

dictionary.reference.com...

cat·a·clysm ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kt-klzm)
n.
A violent upheaval that causes great destruction or brings about a fundamental change.
A violent and sudden change in the earth's crust.
A devastating flood.

Does this word apply? Yes and no. Yes, there were localized floods due to deglaciation, as Essan's link points out. Yes there was great destruction and change in the conditions on Earth; not a HUGE change, but a small yet significant one.


Local floods happening in many diverse places in a narrow timeframe would make sense during a deglaciation and would account for collections of bones. Actually it's one of the few things that would explain it. A rain of firey meteors would not gather corpses together in a big pile. Massive earthquakes wouldn't either. Even great big friggin crevices opening in the earth wouldn't do it unless there happened to be a ton of animals all standing over it while it opened very very rapidly.

www.knowledge.co.uk...

Among the fundamental geophysical effects experienced by Earth were a massive fracturing of the crust, a realignment of Earth's axis, elevation of new mountains, and widespread rearrangement of land and sea. These changes were accompanied by an appalling global conflagration, a gigantic flood, and what has been described as 'collapsed sky' conditions. A bombardment by debris from the disintegrated satellite of the destroyed planet added to the worldwide chaos.

These guys are Zech Sitchin with better degrees, except that they apparently admit that they can't read Sumerian (which IS a big improvement over Sitchin, I concede).

They are claiming that the mountains were formed, the land and sea dramatically rearranged, the whole earth burned then flooded, and that we were showered by chunks of a destroyed planet- all just 11,500 years ago.

Now, I'm interested in hearing what they consider "major redistribution of land and sea" because we have ample fossil evidence that most of what is dry has been dry for a while, and we have very good explanations for those areas which we believe to be more recently dried.

I'd also like to point out that "major redistribution of land and sea is VERY hard to miss. I know this because I live in the Coachella Valley, where the Colorado River once created a lake of some 2,000 square miles in area. The smoking gun is readily apparent from over a mile away on the local hillsides.



Also, despite my best efforts, I have found ZERO material from the authors you named in any peer-reviewed journal, nor have I found mention of this supposed world-wide layer of fire damage in any peer reviewed journal (using Ebsco Host periodical database).

I hate to always be stepping on fascinating theories, and believe me when I say that this is a FASCINATING possibility, and I would be absolutely glued to any study that showed strong evidence that it actually happened, but there is not a ring of truth to the claims these men make.

Maybe during spring break i'll check the book out from a library if i can find it and try to track down and critique their sources and interpretation thereof, but no promises because I'm always planning to do things and then becoming burried under school work instead.

These guys are thin ice though, and I shall be under it when it breaks. (Yeah, I know, cheap Bricktop line- I love to quote movies).

I realize the rain of meteorites would not pile up the flora and fauna like that, Vagabond. I am sorry for not explaining more clearly, the book outlines what type of event would account for the balls of detritus and the multitude of aligned craters. I most likely neglected to outline that, my mistake. They theorize that if a large enough object skimmed our atmosphere, it would rain down said meteorites, and the massive gravitational forces would cause the magma to rise and ebb like the oceans, causing the crust to buckle, quakes, eruptions, and a high tide like nothing we are likely to see, where the oceans would be literally pulled up over the continents.
Of course they may be way off, unfortunately, it is very hard to discuss the validity of their research and conclusions when I am the only person who has even a cursory knowledge of them. Sorry again, I am starting to think I should have acquired a copy of the book before posting this thread.

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Why do all of the threads dry up right before I post something i'm really proud of?

It's the skull.


Personally I tend to agree with the idea that much of the megafauna was killed off by the expansion of humans.

We are just too good at killing things.

I think the large mammals began to take out the large reptiles because the earth was cooling as it headed towards an ice age which in the end took out the large mammals too. Somehow some of the mammals survived such that they could re-emerge after the iceage or they moved to areas where they could survive.

It seems reasonable that the mammals were in some respects more intelligent than the reptiles and that led to their survival too.

Originally posted by denythestatusquo
I think the large mammals began to take out the large reptiles because the earth was cooling as it headed towards an ice age which in the end took out the large mammals too.

Are you claiming that the mastodons and saber tooths "took out" the dinosuars?

www.atlantisquest.com...

'Over 200 species of large animals disappeared from the earth at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch in an event known to paleontologists as the "Pleistocene Extinction". Compare this with the Archeological Chart (on the Anthropology page), which illustrates that the numerous Upper Paleolithic tool industries all ended at this same time.'

www.knowledge.co.uk...

The above link is a brief summary of the book I quoted in the first post.

www.talkorigins.org...

This one tells a bit about different mammoth extinctions, and is posted out of fairness, as it is not totally supportive of my position, but included because it was informative and quite well written.


www.andaman.org...-2

Here is information on the Toba bottleneck, also not supportive of the book, but important to know regarding an above post.

www.peter-thomson.co.uk...

Thomson has numerous interesting theories, but this page specifically relates because it pokes holes in current ice age theory, which was a topic that was also well covered in the Allen/Delair book.

www.geocities.com...

And here is one example of an ancient cataclysm, one of many, but included because of how particularly well it fits. Numerous others fit well too, but this one was the first one I found.

barclay1720.angelcities.com...

Here is a page that says that some scholars ate Mammoth meat, and it was 'not bad', which if true, has definite repercussions regarding the speed at which it froze, and thus, the temperatures required so as to not cause 'freezer burn'.

That's all for now, but I will find more.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
We are just too good at killing things.

So true, the Dodo, Great Auk, Stellar Sea Cow, Tasmanian Tiger, Passenger Pigeon, and Atlantic Grey whale, heck even the Beothuks would be good witnesses to that, had we left any alive. But thats efficiency for you.

It seems unlikely to my layman's mind that such a monumental impact would A. Leave any complex life on this planet. B. Not leave a distinct calling card in the direction of continental drift. C. Not leave bassalt plains that could be dated. D. Not increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere dramatically courtesy of volcanic erruptions combined with a reduction in photosynthesis activity.

Just tossing something out there. I'll check the book out when I've got some time, but I gotta tell you that on the surface this stuff just doesn't seem to pass the most basic "sanity checks". Maybe the book will answer the challenges that I see when I get around to it, but if it does I'll be very impressed.

Originally posted by BlackGuardXIII

barclay1720.angelcities.com...

Here is a page that says that some scholars ate Mammoth meat, and it was 'not bad', which if true, has definite repercussions regarding the speed at which it froze, and thus, the temperatures required so as to not cause 'freezer burn'.

That page also claims a bunch of buttercups were found in the stomach of the berezovka mammoth - in fact, it was pollen grains. And they were arctic buttercups - the sort of thing that you find common today in places like Svalbard....

In actual fact frozen Bison flesh, from an animal carbon dated to c36kya, was indeed eaten by scientists who reported:- "A small part of the mummy's neck was diced and simmered in a pot of stock and vegetables. We had Blue Babe for dinner. The meat was well aged but still a little tough, and it gave the stew a strong Pleistocene aroma, but nobody there would have dared miss it." See Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe by R Dale Guthrie.

However there is no evidence that any mammoth flesh has ever been eaten (reports of 'Mammoth steaks' being on sale at a restaurant in Fairbanks miss the rather obvious point that when a shop holds a 'mammoth sale' it doesn't mean it's selling woolly elephants )

I too have read the information on the pollen versus flowers, in the stomach versus the mouth, and its being arctic versus temperate, and agree that sounds much more believable. As to the mammoth meat being eaten, the bison mummy meat stew information is appreciated, and I will take your word on the mammoth meat never being eaten, though if I can, I will see if I can find the source of the original claim. I originally read the claim at least 15 years ago, which said mammoth steaks were served to a assembly of archeologists in Siberia. It could have been total fiction, but I am still curious about who started the rumour.