Recent animal extinctions: Recipes for disaster

Journal Article · · American Scientist; (United States)

OSTI ID:5239609

Burnery, D A ^[1]

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1. Fordham Univ., Bronx, NY (United States)

Many late-prehistoric extinctions share ingredients: climate and vegetation change, human hunting, and the arrival of exotic animals. This article looks at evidence from the past to compare with the concerns about biodiversity in the present. For example, thousands of years ago North America rivaled Africa's Serengeti Plains for big animals. Almost all disappeared from the fossil record 11,000 years ago at approximately the same time as evidence for human beings and rapid climate change also appear in the fossil record. Topics discussed in the article include the following: evidence from Euroasian art; the remarkable large-animal extinctions which occured in Australia and New Guinea by the end of the last ice age; the Blitzcrieg Hypotheses involving the early American big-game hunters overkill (contribution of climate change and other human activities and the lack of similar south American evidence included); late Pleistocene extinction on isolated oceanic islands, including evidence of human/animal interaction; Hawaii, New Zealand, Madagascar; lessons from this past reconstruction of extinctions. 12 refs., 17 figs.

• OSTI ID: 5239609
• Journal Information: American Scientist; (United States), Journal Name: American Scientist; (United States) Vol. 81:6; ISSN 0003-0996; ISSN AMSCAC
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

560400* -- Other Environmental Pollutant Effects
63 RADIATION, THERMAL, AND OTHER ENVIRON. POLLUTANT EFFECTS ON LIVING ORGS. AND BIOL. MAT.
ANIMALS
BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
BIOLOGICAL EXTINCTION
CLIMATIC CHANGE
GLOBAL ASPECTS
HUMAN FACTORS
SPECIES DIVERSITY