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Hi!
In the Notoungulata article it is mentioned that these animals lived also in Asia (there is a map as well). What is the explanation of this, as South America was not connected with other continents in the time of Notoungulata (57 mya)?
- It is mentioned in the article now. --Fama Clamosa (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Using questionable evidence to support megafauna deaths
Ramblings that are barely relevant to this article |
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At the end of the section Evolutionary History, it is implied that the arrival of humans 12,000 years ago may have had an impact on the species becoming extinct. This is once again trotting out a tired and mythical idea that humans only arrived in North and South America no earlier than 12,800 years ago, and once they arrived, humans (aka bloodthirsty Native Americans) rampaged both continents wiping out everything in sight. Besides the political assertions this outrageous hypothesis implies, it also fuels male fantasies about "man the mighty hunter." Whether hunter-gatherers or farmers, Paleolithic peoples not only strove to survive and hopefully prosper, but also sought to avoid wiping out the fauna and flora so that their tribe would survive more than a single generation. Only in the minds of men exposed to the massive carnage of world wars would pop culture fanatics and unthinking academics envision wiping out everything to extinction was something Paleolithic people would embrace; rather I believe they would be horrified. Undoubtedly, the mighty hunter trope persisted because being an unparalleled killer of everything one surveys and imagining oneself as a descendant of unrestrained butchers was "cool." This ludicrous assertion also ignores decades of well-curated research by Dr. Tom Dillehay at Mesa Verde in Chile dating to 18,000 years ago. Dillehay for decades was ignored by his peers because his archeological evidence challenged at sacred model that humans arrived no earlier than 12,800 years ago, and such immigrants absolutely had to have traveled via Beringia. Anything that challenged that accepted American academic model tended to get roundly trashed like middle school bullies scenting blood. The Meadowlawn cave site in Pennsylvania, initially dated to 28,000 years ago but later downgraded to much later a coal seam somehow contaminated everything, a criticism introduced by critics needing any excuse to question the veracity of the dates as being wrong. This example readily comes to mind as one among many others. Then, hundreds of human footprints are found at White Sands, New Mexico in July 2022. Using multiple testing methods, experts get dates ranging between 21-23,000 years ago. Amazingly, Tom Dillehay starts to get recognition for his decades of work in South America. When he mentions he's found another, yet to be excavated site nearby dating to 32,000 years ago, he's once again ignored. Dr. Dillehay, last time I checked, was teaching archeology at BYU, but that was a few years ago, and things change. (Sadly, the White Sands area is next to a military proving grounds, so some prints can't be examined because of unexploded ordnance. Worse, unless they are re-buried again, exposed prints quickly erode in the wind. Many of those discovered now only exist in drawings and photographs, the original prints have since vanished forever.) The main problem with Beringia was that while it was filled with many animals to hunt, it provided no easy access to the rest of North America. The so-called corridor that existed was hundreds of miles of barren tundra bereft of plants and animals live off of while migrating. Sailing was much faster and gave ready access to coastal environments to provide sustenance. Academics resisted. Humans have been sailing for at least 60,000 years. Why do I say that when the earliest evidence only goes back 52,000 years? Well, because there was never a land bridge to Australia, yet the Aborigines were there 60,000 years ago. Explain that without boats and sailing. Ocean's Razor works. Besides the racist implications of "man the might hunter" casually obliterating all the wildlife in sight (and thereby calling into question of just exactly how savage were those Native Americans?), this ugly idea has also been trotted for other forms of discrimination as well. In any event, had the authors looked (they had Google Search in 2020), they would have found Dillehay's research showing human habitation as far back as 18,000 years ago. Because I trust Dillehay's work, I'm willing to go further and say by 32,000 years ago humans were already living in South America as far south as Chile. When humans enter a new region, the ecology destabilizes for a few decades, maybe even a couple of centuries. But then things stabilize. Whether farmers or hunter-gatherers, people want plenty to eat, but they also want there to be enough food for their children and grandchildren to have good lives too. What the footprints in White Sands demonstrated was that Native tribes living in the Americas had reached a balance with environment. They co-existed with megafauna for thousands of years, so their sudden and unexplained thirst to murder everything in sight makes no sense. But wait, there are two OTHER possible reasons for megafauna to go extinct – climate change and/or one or more asteroids wiping everything out. On March 31, 2007, PBS NOVA aired for the first and last time the episode entitled "The Last Great Extinction." (Season 36, episode 3607) After the show aired there was such an outcry of rage and vitriol, PBS agreed to rename the episode to "Megabeasts Sudden Death." There are some enterprising souls who frequently upload the episode to YouTube. Or, you can buy it from PBS like I have. NOVA won't air the episode again because of all the academic pushback. The episode proves that at least one asteroid hit North America. They found hexagonal diamonds in multiple ice cores extracted from Greenland, and in all the samples tested they were consistently getting dates of around 12,800 years ago. Hexagonal diamonds are only formed during asteroid impacts. They don't occur naturally any other way. One of the criticisms of the asteroid theory is, "Show us the crater!" Cue geologist Dr. Antonio Zamora, who uploads some of his scientific research. He found found an impact crater in south Saginaw Bay, underwater. Based on the crater size, Zamora estimated the fire storm it generated vaporized everything in a 1200 km radius. His episode entitled "Younger Dryas Impact on Ice"; uploaded on 2019-10-20. https:///www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0MsB8pN1uY One of the mysteries is what caused Lake Agassiz to vanish? Once, it contained the same amount of fresh water as all the other Great Lakes combined. Yet something happened that caused the lake to burst its banks and empty. Zamora believes a second companion asteroid hit the massive Laurentide ice shield, eradicating the lake, and partially scoured out the banks of the St Lawrence Seaway. It's Zamora's belief that the sudden influx of huge amounts of fresh water into the Atlantic had a devastating effect on the Gulf Stream Conveyor. The ice age was in retreat at the time of the impacts; afterward, for the next 1500 years, the world suddenly plunged into the Younger Dryas. There's no evidence for the second asteroid, but having evidence for one impact means a second strike is possible. The megafauna vanished around the world because the earth was struck by two (possibly more) asteroids, and it brought about rapid and dramatic climate change. Except for nearly all of North America, where all the thousands of humans and all the many megafauna were burned in continent wide fires that burned everything to ash. Oddly, one of the staunch supports for human migration into North America not happening before 12,800 years ago was linguistics. Using language drift and other tools, it was determined that no Native American language in North America was older than 12,800 years. Which was true because the previous inhabitants, including Clovis users, were obliterated by a catastrophe from the skies. The resulting climate change doomed other large beasts in South America and other places around the world. Notoungulata and other vanished megafauna weren't over hunted. The asteroids brought on a sudden ice age, and the beasts weren't able to adapt to a radically changed climate. Man the mighty hunter, the ravager of the ancient world? Please spare us that insulting fantasy trope masquerading as legitimate theory. Let's agree to stop maligning Native Americans. Let's bury that absurd idea while remembering how much damage such ideas have caused to others, intentionally (for nefarious political reasons) or not. Don't journals do peer reviews anymore? DTavona (talk) 12:53, 4 September 2025 (UTC)
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