The Quaternary period (from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present) has seen the extinctions of numerous predominantly megafaunal species, which have resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity and the extinction of key ecological strata across the globe. The most prominent event in the Late Pleistocene is differentiated from previous Quaternary pulse extinctions by the widespread absence of ecological succession to replace these extinct species, and the regime shift of previously established faunal relationships and habitats as a consequence.
The earliest casualties were incurred at 130,000 BCE (the start of the Late Pleistocene), in Australia ~ 60,000 years ago, in Americas ~ 15,000 years ago, coinciding in time with the early human migrations. However, the great majority of extinctions in Afro-Eurasia and the Americas occurred during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch (13,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE). This extinction wave did not stop at the end of the Pleistocene, continuing, especially on isolated islands, in human-caused extinctions, although there is debate as to whether these should be considered separate events or parts of the same event.
Among the main causes hypothesized by paleontologists are overkill by the widespread appearance of humans and natural climate change. A notable modern human presence first appeared during the Middle Pleistocene in Africa, and started to establish continuous, permanent populations in Eurasia and Australasia from 100,000 BCE and 63,000 BCE respectively, and the Americas from 22,000 BCE.
A variant of the former possibility is the second-order predation hypothesis , which focuses more on the indirect damage caused by overcompetition with nonhuman predators. Recent studies have tended to favor the human-overkill theory
The Late Pleistocene saw the extinction of many mammals weighing more than 40 kg. The proportion of megafauna extinctions is progressively larger the further the human migratory distance from Africa, with the highest extinction rates in Australia, and North and South America.
Extinctions in the Americas eliminated all mammals larger than 100 kg of South American origin, including those which migrated north in the Great American Interchange. It was only in Australia and the Americas that extinction occurred at family taxonomic levels or higher. This may relate to non-African megafauna and Homo sapiens not having evolved as species alongside each other. These continents had no known native species of Hominoidea (apes) at all, so no species of Hominidae (greater apes) or Homo.
The increased extent of extinction mirrors the migration pattern of modern humans: the further away from Africa, the more recently humans inhabited the area, the less time those environments (including its megafauna) had to become accustomed to humans (and vice versa).
There is no evidence of megafaunal extinctions at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, suggesting that increased cold and glaciation were not factors in the Pleistocene extinction.[18]
There are three main hypotheses to explain this extinction:
- climate change associated with the advance and retreat of major ice caps or ice sheets.
- "prehistoric overkill hypothesis"
- the extinction of the woolly mammoth allowed the extensive grassland to become birch forest, then subsequent forest fires changed the climate.
There are some inconsistencies between the current available data and the prehistoric overkill hypothesis. For instance, there are ambiguities around the timing of sudden Australian megafauna extinctions. Evidence supporting the prehistoric overkill hypothesis includes the persistence of megafauna on some islands for millennia past the disappearance of their continental cousins. For instance, Ground sloths survived on the Antilles long after North and South American ground sloths were extinct, woolly mammoths died out on remote Wrangel Island 1,000 years after their extinction on the mainland, while Steller's sea cows persisted off the isolated and uninhabited Commander Islands for thousands of years after they had vanished from the continental shores of the north Pacific. The later disappearance of these island species correlates with the later colonization of these islands by humans.
Alternative hypotheses to the theory of human responsibility include climate change associated with the last glacial period, and the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis as well as Tollmann's hypothesis that extinctions resulted from bolide impacts.
Recent research indicates that each species responded differently to environmental changes, and no one factor by itself explains the large variety of extinctions. The causes may involve the interplay of climate change, competition between species, unstable population dynamics, and human predation.
The Afrotropic and Indomalaya biogeographic realms, or Old World tropics, were relatively spared by the Late Pleistocene extinctions. Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia are the only regions that have terrestrial mammals weighing over 1000 kg today. However, there are indications of megafaunal extinction events throughout the Pleistocene, particularly in Africa two million years ago, which coincide with key stages of human evolution and climatic trends. The center of human evolution and expansion, Africa and Asia were inhabited by advanced hominids by 2mya, with Homo habilis in Africa, and Homo erectus on both continents. By the advent and proliferation of Homo sapiens circa 315,000 BCE, dominant species included Homo heidelbergensis in Africa, the denisovans and neanderthals (fellow H. heidelbergensis descendants) in Eurasia, and Homo erectus in Eastern Asia. Ultimately, on both continents, these groups and other populations of Homo were subsumed by successive radiations of H. sapiens. There is evidence of an early migration event 268,000 BCE and later within neanderthal genetics, however the earliest dating for H. sapiens inhabitation is 118,000 BCE in Arabia, China and Palestine and 71,000 BCE in Indonesia.Additionally, not only have these early Asian migrations left a genetic mark on modern Papuan populations, the oldest known pottery in existence was found in China, dated to 18,000 BCE. Particularly during the late Pleistocene, megafaunal diversity was notably reduced from both these continents, often without being replaced by comparable successor fauna. Climate change has been explored as a prominent cause of extinctions in Southeast Asia.
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 💖 Come talk in the New weekly queer thread
- 🧡 Monthly Neurodiverse Megathread
- 💛 Read about a current topic in the news
- ⭐️ October Movie Nominations ⭐️
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes struggle sessions over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
- 💙Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion -- reddit link
- 💙Resources for Palestine
Theory:
- ❤️Foundations of Leninism
- ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays
- ❤️Mega upload with theory for many tendencies
Remember nerds, no current struggle session discussion here to the general megathread, i will ban you from the comm and remove your comment, have a good day/night :meow-coffee:
I was talking to a lib today who said that Trump was a worse president than Nixon because "Trump was going to sell the country to Putin." When I said that sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks, then prolonging and expanding the war as president was, alone, worse than anything Trump did they said "more people would've died if Russia took over this country."
I get that libs have this whole conspiracy about Trump literally being a Russian spy, but what the hell does "sell the country to Putin" even mean? The president isn't the king, he doesn't own all the land. What, was Trump going to announce that the military was disbanded and Russian troops would be occupying all domestic military bases? Whatever it means, I'm sure it's a case of a brain absolutely poisoned by the MSM.
He was clearly planning to sell his title of President of the USA to Putin and then everyone would have to do what Putin says
:putin-wink:
New Megathread Nerds!!! :arm-L: ::freeze-peach: :arm-R:
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Remember nerds, no current struggle session discussion here on the general megathread, i will ban you from the comm and remove your comment, have a good day/night :meow-coffee:
did ya'll start these with the big bang. I am liking the megathreads that we are just making away through planetary history.
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under communism i will have so many obscure melee weapons of the medieval era
He's going to have to defeat me and my amateur billhook skills first
I have a pretty nice wakizashi because I am a massive dork.
Even has real ray skin on the handle.
I am both lol. My current fav game is Valheim. I'm pretty handy with an axe too, at least for chopping wood.
Growing up in the mountains far enough out to not have coverage of municipal road crews or gas heating outside of what you can store on your property means you pretty much have to or you will definitely freeze and/or find yourself stranded for long stretches each winter. Done a fair bit of road maintenance too with my dad. Once we had to basically rebuild a stretch of dirt road with a full size grader and everything.
See its acceptable for you to own an axe, you need one.
I live in the suburbs, why do I have an axe? Simply for the fun of it.
Also valid and should be a fundamental piece of kit for any go bag or general prepping regardless of where you live. They're also really fun to throw
I definitely didn't live this far out, but when my dad had grandkids he poured his own speedbump in the road because he thought people were driving too quickly, haha. Far as I know the county never said anything to him.
no because i live under capitalism and not communism so i cannot spend my labor value on dorky sharp objects :sadness:
But will you have the drip to go with them? Fashion Souls is the real endgame
"The south was for state rights!"
Yeah, but state rights to do what? Own slaves.
"the progressives are for trans rights!,
Yeah but trans rights to do what? Exactly, own slaves.
The LGBT agenda is to use wind power in order to enslave all conservative white men.
In his hit song 'White and Nerdy', Weird Al Yankovic says the following line:
"The pens in my pocket, I must protect 'em"
In the music video Al points at his pocket which has a pocket protector and several pens inside it. The "'em" in this sentence, that he "must protect", would seem to refer to his pens; as "'em" (them) is pluralized like the pens are, while the pocket is a singular object. This is notable as a pocket protector, commonly associated with being nerdy, is not used to protect pens, but rather protect the pocket it is in from pens that may leak ink and possibly ruin the shirt.
Stonethrow posts a new comic
Its filled with the usual nazi stuff
Leftists on twitter reposting it: "OMG DID YOU SEE THIS RACIST COMIC??? LOOK AT IT, ITS SO RACIST!!!"
Like, yes, obviously? Its fucking stonetoss, what exactly are you getting out of reposting a nazi webcomic? Everything he does is racist/transphobic/literally-every-phobic. You spreading them is not only not helpful, it actively helps him by giving him more views.
So sick of this shit, and it happens every fucking time. He posts very-thinly-veiled bigoted crap and people who hate it spread it for him by pointing out exactly how its bigoted (like its some revelation that they found the "hidden" racism or transphobia). Stop giving this moronic nazi exactly what he wants, he's not upset at your negative attention he actively encourages it.
I lurk more than I post, but I just hit 1000 comments :party-cat:
the WOKE LEFT is trying to say that jesus wasn't born in a manger but a THEY/THEMger
I've been keeping away from matrix / the backend coders chans of hexbear so I don't know what they did but:
- The website has been noticeably faster, for almost all backend controllers, since an update I think a week ago. It's awesome. Loading a user's history used to take at least 5 secs; it's basically instant now.
- We now have access to our third comments history page.
Someone either did some serious optimization or tweaked the (pgsql I think) DB conf real good. Thanks a bunch ! you guys should communicate more on efforts / updates of the fork. It's always deeply appreciated, in any case :soviet-heart:
Edit: just remembered you can donate (which I just did). Pays the dedicated servers at least. I'm sure every little bit helps.
I love that the nation of Chad is named and shaped the way it is
the worst part about giving yourself an injection is taking the cap off the needle. Why tf does it have to be on so tight :meow-tableflip:
Don't worry, I chose that spirit because I also live it. It's a self-report, if anything
Obviously all our spirits are checking in at the haunted hotel from Luigi's Mansion 3