User:CassieSmith5/Pleistocene megafauna

Note to which ever poor soul has to peer review my article.
I have not done much more than copyedit part of the Pleistocene megafauna article for the final project.

I plan to add to the sections on North and South America. Specifically, I want to talk about how oral tradition and archaeological evidence show the interactions between Pleistocene megafauna and early Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. I was particularly inspired by the anecdote on Paulette Steeves' podcast about how the Osage have a oral tradition that for a period of time, people could not go outside because the bison and mastodons were fighting and how when the fight was over, the Osage burned the remains of the dead animals AND THEN how archaeologists found evidence of burned megafaunal remains!!

So in terms of a peer review, it would be awesome if you could read over either the lead, the North America and/or the South America section of the Pleistocene megafauna article. I copied these sections below. Additionally, I'm not overly attached to this specific wikipedia article, so if you come across a different article that might fit my needs better, I am very open to suggestions.

Lead
Pleistocene megafauna is the set of large animals that lived on Earth during the Pleistocene epoch and became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event. Megafauna are any animals with an adult body weight of over 45 kilograms (99 lb). We know about Pleistocene megafauna today because of the fossil record, oral tradition and modern species.

North America
During the American megafaunal extinction event, around 12,700 years ago, 90 genera of mammals weighing over 44 kilograms became extinct. The Late Pleistocene fauna in North America included giant sloths, short-faced bears, several species of tapirs, peccaries (including the long-nosed and flat-headed peccaries), the American lion, giant tortoises, Miracinonyx ("American cheetahs", not true cheetahs), the saber-toothed cat Smilodon and the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium, dire wolves, saiga, camelids such as two species of now-extinct llamas and Camelops, at least two species of bison, the stag-moose, the shrub-ox and Harlan's muskox, 14 species of pronghorn (of which 13 are now extinct), horses, mammoths and mastodons, the beautiful armadillo and the giant armadillo-like Glyptotherium, and giant beavers, as well as birds like giant condors and teratorns.

During this megafaunal extinction event, North America lost 70% of its megafauna species. The reasons for the extinction event are still under debate, but it has largely been attributed to both climate change and human-driven extinction. Human-driven extinction is related to the early migrations of Indigenous Peoples to the Americas. There are various human impacts that could have put pressure on different megafauna species, including direct overhunting and cascading trophic interactions. Some researchers attribute the extinction of megafauna to the presence of Clovis hunting, along with significant human population increases which would have increased hunting intensity and frequency, around 13,000 years ago. Contemporaneously, around 12,000 years ago, a global cooling event called the Younger Dryas (YD) occurred, which would have dramatically effected habitat area and food sources for many megafaunal species.

The majority of scientists agree that the megafauna extinction in North America was largely caused by both human-impacts and climate change since they occurred during the same 5000 year period. However, it can be difficult to generalize an extinction event for the continent as a whole when the climate and human impacts varied spatially, temporally, and seasonally so it is hard to generalize what triggered the event for the entire continent. Thus, it is important to consider that the causes can significantly vary for different species and different regions of North America. The extinction of megafauna and first appearance of humans did not completely correlate across North America, meaning that each area needs to be separately considered when attempting to determine the cause of extinction.

Megafauna extinctions that are most consistent with human activity in North America are of the mammoth, horse, and saber-toothed cat. Humans directly impacted mammoth and horse species by overhunting, while the saber-tooth tiger was pushed to extinction indirectly by humans overhunting of their prey. There are two species of megafauna whose extinctions appear to have no link to human hunting, they are the Shasta ground sloth and mastodon.

Alaska
Alaska is situated in the northwestern most part of North America. Megafauna disappeared from these higher latitudes generally earlier than the rest of North America. This means that the megafauna in the region either went extinct locally or migrated south as a result of the YD cooling event. Megafauna species disappeared from Alaska approximately 1000 to 4000 years before there was significant human presence in Alaska, indicating that their demise likely resulted from climate change.

The Great Lakes Region
Megafauna species disappeared from Great Lakes Region considerably more recently than in higher latitudes, like Alaska. Additionally, the first appearances for human species were considerably older for this region compared to other regions in North America. Due to the overlaps of these two appearances, it has been suggested from the fossil record that humans and megafauna overlapped in the region for 7000 years. However, the presence of humans does not mean that the megafauna extinction event in the region was solely attributed to human impacts. There has been significant evidence into the cause of extinction in this area being related to the fact that both climate change and human impacts hit simultaneously.

The West/ Pacific Coast
The Pacific Coast was one of the region where early Indigenous Peoples first migrated. This is due to the fact that humans may have migrated further south from Alaska through a pathway that went along the Pacific Coast. However, there appears to have been little overlap between humans and megafauna species in these region. One potential for this could be due to poor sampling due to sea-level rise that could have “obscured older coastal sites”.

Indigenous Knowledge of Pleistocene Megafauna
Indigenous knowledge of Pleistocene megafauna has survived via oral tradition and representations such as petroglyphs.

The Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest has oral traditions and a dance centered around a story of mammoths migrating into their land. On the Umatilla Indian Reservation, where the Cayuse people lived historically and today, two mammoth teeth were discovered during construction of a golf course.

An Osage tradition tells about a battle between mastodons and mammoths in the Great Plains region. This battle left many animals dead and after the battle was over the Osage burned the dead animals. Later, after the Osage were forceable moved to a reservation, white settlers found mastodon and mammoth bones at this site.

Throughout western North America, there are many stories of large, black-winged birds, known as thunderbirds, which interacted with Indigenous people in both positive and negative ways. These stories of thunderbirds share similarities with species from the genus Teratornis, which are found throughout fossil record of the west coast.

South America
About 10,000 years ago, the landscape of South America contained numerous species of megafauna, many of which have no modern species for comparison. South America was home to bears, sabertooth cats, large capybaras and llamas. Additionally, there were huge terrestrial sloths, armored glyptodonts (similar to an armadillo, but the size of a hippo), and animals similar to camels and rhinoceroses (macrauchenids and toxodonts). These animals went extinct during the Quaternary Period and all South American mammal species larger than 100 kg were lost. The explanation for their extinction has not been definitively answered, and is a topic of debate among scientists.

The continent of South America was isolated for millions of years during the Cenozoic Period, which had a significant impact on its wildlife. This isolation helped foster species that were not found anywhere else on Earth. Approximately 3 million years ago, the Great American Biotic Interchange occurred due to the Isthmus of Panama, which allowed for the mixing of North and South American faunas. The mixing of faunas created new opportunities for expansion, competition, and replacement of species. South American wildlife in the Pleistocene varied greatly; an example is the giant ground sloth, Megatherium. The continent also had quite a few grazers and mixed feeders such as the camel-like litoptern Macrauchenia, Cuvieronius, Doedicurus, Glyptodon, Hippidion and Toxodon. There were also Stegomastodons, found as far south as Patagonia. The main predators of the region were Arctotherium and Smilodon.