Talk:Paul Schultz Martin

Current status of Martin's "Overkill" hypothesis
I cleaned this up, removing loaded, ue language & unsupported opinions. Still needs work! I don't really know what the point of the Madagascar bit is. Perhaps the OP will return & comment? I hope so. --Pete Tillman (talk) 19:13, 13 September 2017 (UTC)


 * As it happens, I'm reading his "Twilight of the Mammoths" book and taking notes. So I'll be adding some material from there, time & energy permitting. Interesting book, ideas & author. --Pete Tillman (talk) 21:26, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Barlow is starting to edit, add content and images, to this page
I came to this page today because I am adding a lot of content to the Torreya taxifolia page, where I reference a paper that Paul S. Martin and I co-wrote in 2004. Because I link to this page from the T. taxifolia page, I wanted to see what is here now. Overall, I am grateful that, as the previous editor stated, the offensive language has been eliminated. But now I see that criticism of Martin by someone I have never heard of, Fosha, is the first (and only) example of criticism (entailing 3 sentences). The reference suggests that Fosha's criticism is based entirely on Fosha's book review of Martin's popular book, Twilight of the Mammoths. A book review is not peer-reviewed, and it is no substitute for wikipedia's standard of looking for either an academic paper that is in the "Review" category or a journalist writing an article or book, and thus not biased as any academic motivated to write a book review (or a book) would be.

I will definitely return to this wikipedia page and insert more credible criticism of the overkill thesis, as well as finally inserting the supportive writings. Plus some of Paul's own students have utilized his thesis to make stunning contributions of their own — especially in how small islands in the Caribbean show solid evidence of ground sloth extinction in conjunction with archeological evidence of the first arrival of humans.

Wikipedia editors will want to observe what I do, of course, because Paul Martin is a co-author of mine for our 2004 paper, "Bring Torreya taxifolia North Now," and he wrote the foreword to my book (published 2001, Basic Books) The Ghosts of Evolution. My work is a primary reference in the Evolutionary anachronism wikipedia page — which was created and written by somebody else, not me — and, as I recall, I myself had to add a reference to that page, plus text, to explain that I was not the creator of the theory; I simply was the science writer who wrote the popular book on that topic (2001), whereas Daniel Janzen and Paul S Martin published the theory in their 1982 paper in the journal Science. Their paper was titled: "Neotropical Anachronisms: The Fruits the Gomphotheres Ate."

The last editing I will likely do here today is to add a new section topic about Paul's contributed to the early academic conversations on "Assisted migration" as a new climate adaptation tool for (a) helping the endangered, relict tree Torreya taxifolia move out of its peak glacial refuge in northern Florida, and (b) now being considered to help other native trees keep pace with a rate of climate change that exceeds their seed dispersal distances from one generation to the next.

I am Connie Barlow Cbarlow (talk) 14:06, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

UPDATE APRIL 5: This is Connie Barlow and I did a lot more editing today on this page, including images. So look at the History tab for April 5 if you want to see what I did and how I explained each set of changes. STILL TO DO: I plan to add a new section just above the "Legacy" section. It will be titled something like "Assisted migration of climate-endangered plants", as Martin and I coauthored in 2004 (Wild Earth magazine) the first advocacy paper on this topic:"Bring Torreya taxifolia north—now". I will also be adding a youtube video I posted of an audio of Martin speaking to me about his Pleistocene rewilding ideas. Overall: Paul's "overkill hypothesis" is, of course, controversial, at least in its details. But his megafaunal dispersal syndrome (I need to add that as a section too) and "Anachronistic plants and their ghosts" have only a few critics, quibbling over details, when the overall ecological concept he contributed to is regarded as mainstream. For the anachronism and megafaunal dispersal syndromes, I will be grabbing ideas, citations, and some words from a wikipedia page I spent several days editing: Evolutionary anachronisms. It may be several days before I return to Martin's page here for more editing and additions.Cbarlow (talk) 23:30, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

UPDATE APRIL 6: I am not an expert on overkill but have been aware of the questions and Martin's role since the 90s. But, gosh darn, whoever inserted the final para misportrayed not only the critique, but outright said things without a reference that implied long pre-Clovis dating evidence when there really isn't any. So, thankfully, the wikipedia pages that author had linked to 3 sites: Topper, Monte Verde, and Paisley Caves did have some good and recent references that I could use. Bottom line, now I feel okay about referring people to this wikipedia page on Paul S Martin. I still will add a section on his role in pioneering advocacy of "assisted migration" for relict plant species, but this page is good enough for now. In case somebody changes that last para in the Overkill section again, here is what I changed it to today:

The overkill hypothesis is still controversial, at least in part.[21] Several pre-Clovis sites in the Americas are generally accepted, notably, Monte Verde and Paisley Caves. While dating of these is still controversial, estimates of these held by the main stream predate earliest Clovis evidence by only a few thousand years rather than original portrayals of perhaps tens of thousands of years.[22][23] As well, when climate is invoked as a causal factor of megafaunal extinctions, it is rarely portrayed as the only cause. For example, in 2012 the authors of a paper published in Nature Communications concluded, "Mammoth extinction was not due to a single cause, but followed a long trajectory in concert with changes in climate, habitat, and human presence."[24] Cbarlow (talk) 16:40, 6 April 2023 (UTC)