Humans and Climate Change Caused the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals

Nationalgeographic.co.id—An international team of scientists has uncovered the factors that led to the extinction of iconic Ice Age mammals such as the woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth. The study is the largest of its kind, involving 40 academic institutions around the world.

The study has been published in the journal Nature by title “Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans” that can be found online.

The findings suggest that climate change and humans were responsible for the mass extinction of large mammals, called megafauna, 50,000 years ago.

An extensive interdisciplinary research team studied the extinction of six Ice Age mammals and found that the impacts of climate change and humans had very different consequences for each species.

“We found that the large mammals that went extinct in the Ice Age were strongly influenced by climate and habitat changes, which raises concerns about the impact of future climate change on modern large animal species,” said Simon Ho, from the University of Sydney.

For decades, scientists have debated the reasons behind the enigmatic mass extinction of the Late Quaternary period, which caused the loss of a third of large mammal species in Eurasia, two-thirds of North America, and nearly 90 percent of the rest of the world.

large mammal and bird species in Australia. In particular, the role played by climate and humans in driving extinction is still being debated.

To untangle the processes underlying the megafaunal extinctions, the researchers combined information from ancient DNA, climate data and archaeological records to examine the extinctions of six herbivorous mammals, woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoths, wild horses, wildebeest, bison and musk oxen.

The results suggest that neither climate nor human occupation alone can explain the megafaunal extinction in the late Quaternary, but that individual species have responded differently to the effects of climate change, habitat shifts, and human encroachment.

Simon Ho said, that the result is more complicated than we previously thought.

“Our study shows that humans did not play a role in the extinction of the woolly rhinoceros or musk ox in Eurasia and that their demise can be fully explained by climate change,” he said.