Posted on 06/27/2009 9:09:29 PM PDT by Fred Nerks
Debate has raged about the demise of “whopper hopper” P. goliah
A fossil study of the extinct giant kangaroo has added weight to the theory that humans were responsible for the demise of “megafauna” 46,000 years ago.
The decline of plants through widespread fire or changes toward an arid climate have also played into the debate about the animals’ demise.
But an analysis of kangaroo fossils suggested they ate saltbush, which would have thrived in those conditions.
The research is in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
There has long been dissent in the palaeontology community about the cause for extinctions worldwide after the end of the last ice age.
Central to the debate has been the demise of the Australian megafauna, including animals such as marsupial lions, hippopotamus-sized wombats and the 2m-tall giant kangaroo Procoptodon goliah.
Last year, researchers dated fossils from Tasmania with the best precision yet, finding that many species survived more than 2,000 years after the arrival of humans.
The researchers concluded that the megafauna eventually met their end due to hunting.
Dental exam
Now, researchers from Australia and the US have combined radiocarbon dating with a so-called microwear analysis of the teeth of P. goliah to determine what it ate and drank.
Different sources of water and food leave trace amounts of particular types, or isotopes, of hydrogen and carbon atoms, which are deposited in the teeth like a recorded diet.
Additionally, tiny patterns of wear give clues about the type of food a given creature chewed.
The team concluded that the giant kangaroos fed mainly on saltbush shrubs.
Other animals such as the marsupial lion disappeared near the same time
Extinction ‘by man not climate’
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Debate has raged about the demise of “whopper hopper” P. goliah
IIRC, there were no White Europeans living in Australia at the time - so you can’t blame us!
Makes one wonder why africans never wiped out their megafauna.
"There were so few species left when humans arrived that to argue humans were responsible for effecting the extinctions is drawing a long bow," says Dr Field. "If humans did contribute to the extinction of those final eight species, it is really only a footnote to the whole process."
WOMBAT LUNCH!
maybe the difficulty in establishing what happened to them has to do with dating...some obviously were much more ancient than others. The aboriginals may have hunted the few that remained, but I doubt we can say with any certainty they are responsible for the extinction of all of them...
The libs will never stop trying to blame man for the extinction of all other species. The will tell you a lion has the right to kill to eat, but man somehow never had that right.
“A fossil study of the extinct giant kangaroo has added weight to the theory that humans were responsible for the demise of “megafauna” 46,000 years ago.”
Oh this must be untrue as we are constantly having it rammed down our throats the the Aborigine lived in total balance with nature in harmony and peace (load of frog sh#t).
Aborigines still hunt with fire as they did way back when - some plants fourish because of this and some die out - as well as the species that rely on them.
Mel
In the middle of Australia there is a group of three or four meteorite craters called the Henley craters. They're like the Arizona meteorite crater -- not so big, but there are several of them -- and, like in Arizona, the land was scattered with pieces of iron meteorite. I think the [inaudible] dating very slow growing desert plants. They believe that the date is about 5000 years ago -- the formation of the craters. The Aboriginal name for this area is the "Place Where The Sun Walked on the Earth" -- they must have seen it!
Feb 8 1999 Pleistocene Extinction of Genyornis newtoni: Human Impact on Australian Megafauna (Gifford H. Miller, John W. Magee, Beverly J. Johnson, Marilyn L. Fogel, Nigel A. Spooner, Malcolm T. McCulloch, Linda K. Ayliffe, Science, Volume 283, Number 5399 Issue of 8 Jan 1999, pp. 205 - 208 ).
Abstract: More than 85 percent of Australian terrestrial genera with a body mass exceeding 44 kilograms became extinct in the Late Pleistocene. Although most were marsupials, the list includes the large, flightless mihirung Genyornis newtoni. More than 700 dates on Genyornis eggshells from three different climate regions document the continuous presence of Genyornis from more than 100,000 years ago until their sudden disappearance 50,000 years ago, about the same time that humans arrived in Australia. Simultaneous extinction of Genyornis at all sites during an interval of modest climate change implies that human impact, not climate, was responsible.
http://www7.pair.com/arthur/meteor/archive/archive5/May98/msg00388.html
Re: Tektites: Fossil record of Australasian impact?
Subject: Re: Tektites: Fossil record of Australasian impact?
From: William Blair
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 09:40:58 -0600
Considering the size of an impact which would be required to produce the Australasian strewn field, I’m wondering why, in all of the books on tektites that I’ve read thus far, no mention is made of any fossil record indicating an extinction event of any size 770K years ago (the K/AR and fission track age of the Australasian tektites). Also, assuming that glacial ice cores provide us with atmospheric data going back that far (?), fallout from such an event should be detectable. If neither the fossil record nor glacial records provide evidence of an impact, it would seem to indicate that some extraterrestrial source for the tektites is far more likely. Why haven’t I seen any mention of this obvious method in the literature?
References:
Tektites: Hypthetical Terrestrial Ring & Possible Lunar Source Craters
From: “Varricchio, Louis”
http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/serpent/crater2.jpg
The Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, about 300,000 years old, is the second largest rimmed meteorite crater in the world at approximately 2850 feet across and 160 feet deep. It is located in the flat plains of the northeast edge of the Great Sandy Desert, about 60 miles south of the town of Halls Creek and about an hour’s drive from the nearby Aboriginal community of Billiluna. The crater lies in the center of the Aboriginal ancestral territory, and the paintings in Track of the Rainbow Serpent explore the spiritual meaning its Aboriginal “owners” attach to it. Photo: Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday.
 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · | ||
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks Fred Nerks. |
||
|
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
They were tasty? Or maybe it was easier to kill one big critter to feed the band instead of several little critters.
_JaneGordon.jpg)
The Fly Dreaming - NgurrinI
Artist's Story
People have been living in this area from long, long time ago. They didn't come from Africa , like Kartiyas (Whites) say. We bin already here. We started here. The land was flat first. Some people were living all around the area. They saw a big bright light come down from the sky, coming down like a ball of fire. It shook the ground. The people hid in a cave, because the ground shook real strong.
They saw dust coming up from the ground. When that settled down they were talking to each other. They didn't want to go closer where that thing fell. They never touched that area. The star that fell down was evil. It was an evil thing.
The flies came out of the hole and the snakes made their home at the crater. The flies were formed by the rain coming down to cool down the ball of fire. Then things started to change and there was plenty of bush meat to hunt...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
