Talk:Pleistocene megafauna

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2021 and 25 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Isabella-knott.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:47, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge request
Merge with megafauna and Australian megafauna?

To further my initial comment, this needs a lot of work. I took out some glaring errors, such as Australian mastodons and dawn horses (which were from the Eocene!), I'd prefer it if someone who knew more about Quaternary Extinctions took on the later part of the article,)Sabine 18:02, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC) User:CayteMeant to cut and paste monotreme not mastadon.
 * It has value in addition to these as it is more descriptive, and details the extinction theories as a whole. It needs work, but it can be improved and expanded. Sabine 17:20, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Made extensive copyedit. Also tried to remove some of the hyperbole. The 'Megafauna and legend' section is still problematic... it seems speculative and there are no citations for any of the facts. I am particularly suspicious of the motives ascribed to the conquistadores (did they really go looking for hot women?). However I limited my edits there to grammar and language use.--Leperflesh 20:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Agree re: 'Megafauna and Legend'. Don't want to do anything drastic as very new to fiddling with Wikipedia, but it's completely lacking in citation and relies on anonymous 'researchers' and 'scientists'. Cotard 11:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Fact Check: Wikipedia's own article on woolly rhinos states that they lived in Eurasia, and not in North America (which is true), while this article claims they were part of the North American megafauna.--Maniraptor 42 23:34, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * [] says that they "have been discovered throughout Europe and Asia, although apparently they did not manage to extend their distribution into North America or to Ireland". Other articles on a cursory google search appear to agree. I'm making the change based on this evidence, although of course if anyone can substantiate a north american location they should change it back.--Leperflesh 23:48, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Civilization
The ice age was ending roughly 10,000 years ago … but that was also marks the beginnings of human civilization. Perhaps was the cause of extinctions (remember, Megafauna died out in Europe the same ways it did in the Americas, even though humans had a small presence in Europe) … I need to find some good sourced information on that. Nonprof. Frinkus 21:15, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I found information on how there were 7 varieties of tree and ground sloth existant on Cuba until the arrival of Homo sapiens at 7000 CE, where they all vanished. Many other animals clearly survived the end of the last ice age, such as Mammoths, Dwarf Elephants to Cuvieronius but could not survive the age of man (ie. civilization).  I think it is naïve to think that humans did not play the largest (but probably not purely exclusive) role in the demise of animals species.  Be you mammoth, dodo or passenger pigeon, never go near the wise hand of man.  Nonprof. Frinkus 00:49, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Palaeoloxodon?
Could the Palaeoloxodon be included in this list? They went extinct in Europe mainly 30,000 years ago, had a Japanese species survive longer and a Mediterranean dwarf species lasting until 8,000 years ago. Nonprof. Frinkus 00:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger
Agree with merging New World Pleistocene extinctions and Pleistocene megafauna, because I don't think the extinction of such a specific set of species warrants an article of it's own. Much rather I'd put the extinction theories into the article which is about the species themselves, thereby putting all information about them in one spot. Alternatively, create an article (or list) named extinction theories, though I think there is not enough information to compose an entire article out of. Disagree with merging it with the megafauna or Australian megafauna article, because there is zero mention of extinction theories in the two, and I'm of the opinion that "megafauna" is too general a term to merge it under. Mzyxptlk 11:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC) I also DISAGREE Ornithomimus 01:58, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Hyperdisease and dogs
This seems to have been going back and fourth for a while. I agree that hyperdisease is (in my view) a fairly marginal hypothesis, however I don't know of a source which says that or something similar, so I am uncomfortable saying so in the article (per WP:OR). I am likewise uncomfortable saying it is well recieved. Canine distemper spread through domestic dogs has been suggested, however it needs to be well cited and our discussion be limited to the material which is found in the published literature. I made some changes to the article, but I think it can be improved. Thoughts? --TeaDrinker 06:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Climate change
I removed the following from the section on climate shifts:
 * One tentative answer is that a nearby supernova altered the galactic environment and as a consequence exaggerated the climatic perturbation. It will require data from space research to advance this claim beyond speculation.

Is there any reliable source which makes this claim? It is a new one on me. --TeaDrinker 00:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Images, Hungarian
Definitely consider adding images from the Hungarian Wikipedia:

http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleisztoc%C3%A9n_megafauna —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

Megafauna and Legend
This entire section needs extensive citations. A lot of it is, I suspect, apocryphal, and the language use is flowery and more like a narrative "just so story" than a researched encyclopedia article.--Leperflesh 00:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Anybody notice that african megafauna are not cited ? If the beginning of the article states that it is one of the continents with the closest species left, shouldn't there be an entry ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.251.154.30 (talk) 19:14, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * They're not included because they didn't go extinct during the same period as the other extinctions, but you're right that many (all?) of the African megafauna also lived during the Pleistocene. Feel free to add an appropriate section I guess? Leperflesh (talk) 22:16, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

References to extant animals being extinct
The paleoecology section links to hippopotamuses, spotted hyenas, and musk ox as going extinct during this period. The links all go to pages for extant animals. I have no background to improve these but that sure doesn't make any sense to me. Are they supposed to be claiming that relatives of these animals went extinct? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.229.161.13 (talk) 13:52, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking that they mean to imply that either these particular animals became extirpated or regionally extinct, or that related species became extinct.--Mr Fink (talk) 16:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Southern California and Wrangell Islands - Reason for undoing deletions
The Southern California Channel Islands supported a mammoth population until about 4,000 B.P.

Wikipedia should probably have a disambiguation page to distinguish between the the Southern California Channel Islands and those in the English Channel.

The removed and restored citation is also correct: R. Dale Guthrie(1) Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775, USA Correspondence to: R. Dale Guthrie1 Email: ffrdg@uaf.edu Abstract Island colonization and subsequent dwarfing of Pleistocene proboscideans is one of the more dramatic evolutionary and ecological occurrences(1, 2, 3), especially in situations where island populations survived end-Pleistocene extinctions whereas those on the nearby mainland did not(4). For example, Holocene mammoths have been dated from Wrangel Island in northern Russia(4). In most of these cases, few details are available about the dynamics of how island colonization and extinction occurred. As part of a large radiocarbon dating project of Alaskan mammoth fossils, I addressed this question by including mammoth specimens from Bering Sea islands known to have formed during the end-Pleistocene sea transgression(5). One date of 7,908 ± 100 yr bp (radiocarbon years before present) established the presence of Holocene mammoths on St Paul Island, a first Holocene island record for the Americas. Four lines of evidence—265 accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon dates from Alaskan mainland mammoths(6), 13 new dates from Alaskan island mammoths, recent reconstructions of bathymetric plots(5) and sea transgression rates from the Bering Sea5—made it possible to reconstruct how mammoths became stranded in the Pribilofs and why this apparently did not happen on other Alaskan Bering Sea islands.
 * I cannot see what St Paul Island off Alaska has to do with the Southern California Channel Islands that you claim. There is nothing in the above citation supporting that. If you believe that there were mammoths off California, you will need to provide a citation supporting that - Guthrie does not. Please comply with WP:CITE and WP:VERIFY. Until then, the edit will be removed. William Harris  •   talk •   02:14, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * St. Paul and the Southern California Channel Islands became isolated because of rising seas. The mammoth populations there, and on Wrangel Island, eventually succumbed to human hunting. Guthrie worked on excavation and analysis of mammoth bones in those Channel islands.

Erlandson, J.M., D.J. Kennett, B.L. Ingram, D.A. Guthrie, D.P. Morris, M.A. Tveskov, G.J. West and P.L. Walker. 1996. An Archaeological and Paleontological Chronology for Daisy Cave (CA–SMI–261), San Miguel Island, California. Radiocarbon 38:1–19. We have to assume edits are made in good faith. I would suggest that if you find the inclusion of that isolate mammoth population is somehow inadequate, misleading or whatever, fixing it to your liking would perhaps be more useful than simply removing the edits. Activist (talk) 18:43, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * You have convinced me with the power of your citation! It stands out better under the islands, and I have taken the liberty of relocating it near the lead of that section as it is a superior citation. A fascinating read, thanks! Regards, William Harris  •   talk •   19:34, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * And thank you for your input! Activist (talk) 01:54, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

focus of article and title of sections
The main focus of this article is about the extinction of the megafauna - which is very important - but that causes a mismatch between the article title and the individual section titles. For example, the "Theories" section is really "Theories of Extinction". Theories by itself is vague - it could refer to theory of how they evolved, or anything. Same thing applies to "Regions Affected". It would be really great if this article actually had a list of megafauna. Alternatively, the article's title could be changed to "Pleistocene megafauna extinction" Dllahr (talk) 22:47, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

The most pressing problems with the article is the lack of distinction from the "Quaternary extinction event" page. Much of the content in this article would be more appropriate for the article that is dedicated to the extinction of this fauna. I would suggest a re-work of this article so that the extinction event is a section at the bottom of the article and dedicate most of the article to the megafauna and how they lived, interacted, and influenced ecology of the time. Focusing on how the megafauna became extinct detracts from presenting known information on the animals that comprise the Pleistocene megafauna.JosephMohan (talk) 20:33, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Could someone contribute to the Africa section?
Please? Sarsath3 (talk) 17:03, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Small grammatical issue, unclear correct fix
/* Extinction Analysis (section) */ "say phases" from the "Northern Eurasia" part (the third paragraph in the Eurasia section) doesn't appear to be grammatically correct, unclear what it is supposed to mean/be. 192.5.110.6 (talk) 20:09, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Evolution of the Genus Homo
Hello all, as part of my Wiki Education assignment, I am hoping to improve this article. Specifically, I hope to (1) expand the section on Pleistocene megafaunal extinction by including recent research in this area, and (2) expand the Paleoecology section to include the effect of megafaunal herbivores on plant communities and fire regimes. Below are some sources I plan to include; any feedback/thoughts would be appreciated.



--Advythr (talk) 02:07, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Merge proposal
See Talk:Quaternary_extinction_event. Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:56, 31 July 2023 (UTC)