AmericasDisappearance of large animalsA staggering 91% of the mammal genera that disappeared at the end of the Ice Age in the Americas were megafauna. In contrast, during earlier American extinctions megafaunal mammals represented only 22-78% of casualties. Animals that vanished include the giant ground sloth, the short-faced bear and the sabre-tooth cat. This jump to a 91% fatality rate is seen as evidence of humans hunting megafauna. Humans are unique predators in that they target large animals in the prime of their life, rather than taking the young or the sick. They can thus have a very dramatic impact on the populations of the animals they hunt. This in turn would affect the animal predators, like the sabre-tooths, which depended on those prey. The final extinction in the Americas occurred over a much shorter time span (a few thousand years) than some of the earlier events. Again this is seen as the work of humans, who colonised the continent relatively rapidly. Archaeological evidence of huntingAt some archaeological sites we have direct evidence that prehistoric humans were killing megafauna. During the Ice Age, the Americas provide the most evidence of human culpability: butchered bones of the western camel (Camelops hesternus) are found at several human camp sites, and both mammoths and mastodon skeletons have been discovered with stone spear points amongst their bones. Other animals hunted include horses, bears, jackrabbits, peccary, tapir, turkey and turtles. The spear points appear to be of a kind that are specialised for hunting large game, like western horses and mammoths. Experiments with reconstructed weapons on elephant carcasses discovered that they were made to maximise penetration of thick hide and minimise risk of the weapon breaking. The spear or dart was probably thrown using a spear thrower (atl atl), so the hunter didn't have to get too close to an irate mammoth! Next - Man the hunter in Australia & New Zealand
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