Damn you extinctions

  • Not_irony [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    lots of collapse stories set the timer back like 50 years. "80% of animal life wiped out since 1950" or whatever. But humans have been doing their thing since they moved out of Africa. We are the most "successful" invasive species on earth right now. and no, I won't provide sources

    • shrewchops [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      There was a dude who wrote a book about how all megafauna conveniently died out from "climate changes" the moment we moved to their biome. I wish I could remember what he was called, or what the book was called.

      • Not_irony [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        This was the counter story that I was worried about getting called out on. Just seems too convenient, but I suppose it's possible. Like, jellyfish blooms didn't cause the massive die offs in the ocean, but they took advantage. :Shrug:

        • sappho [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          For what it is worth I took a class on this subject last year from a professor who is well respected in the field, and we evaluated all the possible explanations for the Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinction - the most well supported theory was hunting by humans. For larger animals that we didn't kill directly, we still eliminated their populations by overhunting their smaller prey ("predator crash").

    • RNAi [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah, the wildest thing I heard was that cattle raising created the Sahara desert