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Shane's avatar

An interesting theory I saw about the megafauna extinctions was that they were triggered by an unprecedented low CO2 level during the end of the last ice age that exceeded the ability of even grasses to cope with, causing ecological collapses around the planet that mostly impacted the largest animals.

The survival of megafauna on isolated islands like New Zealand and Madagascar until very recently (followed by rapid extinction due to human hunting) is a strong piece of evidence favouring human influence in historic extinctions.

Another point worth pointing out- some data suggests that the first waves of "modern" humans leaving Africa followed mostly coastal routes and were mostly specialised in gathering coastal seafood, and were pretty inefficient at hunting large terrestrial animals. This muddies any simple correlation of "earliest arrival of humans" with extinction events since it might matter which humans you are talking about.

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