Articles in Megafauna
2012: Year of the Dragon
In the Chinese calendar, 2012 is the year of the dragon. It is the only of their 12 years that is named after a fictional animal. So are dragons really fictional?
I have investigated the possibility that dragons lived in historical times, primarily because a good book on the topic didn’t exist – see my 6 pages about Did Dragons Exist? I found that dragon myths can be found worldwide, and aside from the very obvious Komodo Dragon, there is another candidate that could explain dragons:
Megalania prisca, as we have learned from fossil evidence, lived in Australia, grew to be a staggering seven metres in length and weighed 600 kgs!
Finally someone has written a proper book on the topic, and I’m pleased to see that the author, trained zoologist Richard Freeman, agrees with me:
“I am absolutely certain, having reviewed many ancient reports of dragon activity, that many sightings – perhaps two …
Megafaunal Extinction – Still Unsolved
Many scientists have been attempting to find an underlying cause for the demise of large mammals at the end of the last Ice Age. And they will still keep trying, because they aren’t thinking outside of the box. Today’s news has a scientist coming up with three different reasons for three species – I can’t see why this was even published…
Results of the analysis, which appear online today in Nature, “were quite surprising,” Willerslev says. “The extinctions seemed to be a random process.”
How is that a result? It basically says we don’t know. Those many species didn’t all die out at the same time due to random processes!
Conclusions from the study:
Humans did not cause the demise of woolly rhinos
Humans did not cause the demise of musk oxen
Humans (and climate change) did cause the demise of the steppe bison
“The team wasn’t able to determine the cause or causes of extinction for …
If the Spotted Horse was real, then…
I actually hadn’t heard of the spotted horse before today.
The spotted horse exists as art found in a Spanish cave that is 25,000 years old – much older than the last global cataclysm, and predating the megafaunal extinction. It is easy to dismiss the dots as purely artistic stylings, but as we keep learning, ancient myths and images tend to be more literal than we expect.
…a small number of caves, including 25,000-year-old Pech Merle in southern France, feature horses painted white with black spots. Some archaeologists have argued that this leopard-like pattern was fanciful and symbol laden rather than realistic. Indeed, in a 2009 analysis of DNA from the bones of nearly 90 ancient horses dated from about 12,000 to 1000 years ago, researchers found genetic evidence for bay and black coat colors but no sign of the spotted variety, suggesting that the spotted horse could have been the figment of …
Killer Koala Unearthed
Like a giant (size of a rhino) cross between a wombat and a koala, the Diprotodon supposedly died out in Australia 25,000 years ago. As with all other extinct megafauna, experts figure that they were either eaten to extinction by people, or they succumbed to disease or climate change. On the first count, I wouldn’t be surprised if the eating was done by the beast!
As a catastrophist who has noticed that most megafaunal extinctions coincided with a global cataclysm roughly 11,000 years ago, I figure they’ll find that this or other specimens of Diprotodon lived more recently that 25,000 years ago.
I look forward to the date determined for this new find, as described today in the Cairns Post:
Scientists believe they are on the verge of unearthing a prehistoric graveyard after digging up a complete skeleton of the world’s largest marsupial on a Far Northern cattle property. Researchers hit the jackpot …
70 American Ancestors / Exploding Transformers
By using nine different genes, and real genetic data (instead of estimates) new research suggests that just 70 people crossed the Bering Strait 12-14K years ago. This means that the wiping out of megafauna in North America, especially the mammoths, is now less likely to have been by human hands. Therefore the odds of a cataclysm being responsible have now increased. More at the Daily Mail.
In the USA there appears to have been a dramatic increase in the number of electrical transformers exploding. These news items could become this year’s sinkholes – weird everyday events getting highlighted a lot in blogs and forums. My take on it is that the increase in the Sun’s activity combined with the extra strain on the US power grid since the last solar peak is the culprit. This would mean that any major solar storms in the next few years are still a major risk …
Mammoth Killing Humans Caused Mini-Ice Age
I feel like a movie villain after the good guy has fallen into my trap. This is so absurd (to catastrophists), it feels like an April Fool’s Day prank!
The suggestion is as follows:
Humans migrated to North America
They slaughtered millions upon millions of mammoths and other megafauna, to extinction (in Siberia there were 150 million mammoths!)
These beasties were a major source of methane = global warming
The result was the Younger Dryas cold event, a mini-Ice Age
Of course the alternative explanation, one that does not involve a slaughter not seen outside of the movies – is that the cold snap killed the mammoths, or perhaps the cause of the cold snap (a pole shift or comet/asteroid) killed the mammoths. But that is too obvious, and breaks the unwritten archaeological rule that nature cannot be catastrophic, only man can…
Mammoths Survived the Cataclysm?
While research into the global cataclysm of roughly 10,000 years ago regularly mentions the extinction of mammoths, it appears that pockets of these giant creatures survived until more recent times.
The core [soil] samples revealed the local Alaskan fauna at the end of the last Ice Age. The oldest sediments, dated to about 11,000 years ago, contain remnant DNA of Arctic hare, bison, and moose; all three animals were also found in higher, more recent layers, as would be expected. But one core, deposited between 10,500 and 7,600 years ago, confirmed the presence of both mammoth and horse DNA.
The team also developed a statistical model to show that mammoth and horse populations would have dwindled to a few hundred individuals by 8,000 years ago.
The range of 7,600 to 10,500 years ago is substantially earlier than the orthodox extinction era of 12,000 years ago. But that date is tied to the faltering …
Decline in Megafauna Pre-Dates Clovis, Extraterrestrial Impact
Twenty thousand years ago, North America had a more impressive array of big mammals than Africa does today; by 10,000 years ago, 34 genera of these mammals were gone, including the 10 species that weighed more than a ton.
A new study, published in Science, shows that the decline in Megafauna in North America pre-dates the Clovis culture, or the proposed extraterrestrial impact, by 1000 years. The evidence comes from fungal remains from dung:
Sporormiella is a fungus that produces spores in the dung of large herbivorous vertebrates. Lots of dung means lots of spores, so Sporormiella gives an index of the biomass of large herbivores.
Here’s the chart:
As usual, I’ll now be critical. The study is based on a mere 13 samples – in my opinion not nearly enough to cover 13 genera across a continent – and 4 of those were rejected as being anomalous. By anomalous they decided they …
Stegomastadon: Another Unexplained Extinction
Not that I’ve tried to catalog all the extinctions from the cataclysm of 12,000 years ago (or so), because I’ve already seen enough evidence to convince me. However, until today I was not aware of this extinct beastie:
The stegomastodon… is a prehistoric mammal that looks like a stronger version of the modern elephant. It lived in the Andes region approximately 13,000 years ago.
…Scientists from the Universidad Austral rushed to the site (La Plata) to look for more fossils, and soon discovered remains of other prehistoric species. The concentration of the remains suggests the possibility that there was a human settlement close-by. Convinced they may have another Monte Verde on their hands, researchers are urging officials to classify the zone as an official archeological site.
Mario Pino, a geologist from the Universidad Austral, explained in an interview to La Nación that “it is very unusual that three distinct species of mammals would …
Giant Lions Roamed Britain 13,000 Years Ago
In North America, lions 25% bigger than the African lions of today, lived just 13,000 years ago. DNA analysis had helped scientists determine that another breed of large lion (5-10% larger than today), known as cave lions, were also living in the UK at that time, just before the global cataclysm that wiped out many large mammal species.
About 13,000 years ago these species died out in a mass extinction. Figuring out the reason behind this, Dr Barnett said, was one of the last great scientific mysteries.
He said: “There are a couple of different schools of thought. It could have been climate change or something to do with humans. Humans could have been killing off their prey or killing the lions themselves.
“The extinction is a big question that remains unresolved. More research and more advanced genetic analysis may help answer it.”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/7974948.stm
Mammoths in UK later than thought
Mammoth bones found in Shropshire, England provide the most geologically recent evidence of woolly mammoths in the UK and North Western Europe. The new evidence proves that mammoths existed in Britain long beyond when they were previously believed to have become extinct.
The bones, of one adult male and at four baby mammoths, were first excavated in 1986, but back then the carbon dating used was not as accurate as today. Consequently the extinction date has been advanced from 21,000 years ago to roughly 14,000 years ago.
“The new dates of the mammoths’ last appearance correlate very closely in time to climate changes when the open grassy habitat of the Ice Age was taken over by advancing forests, which provides a likely explanation for their disappearance,” said Lister. “There were humans around during the time of the Condover mammoths, but no evidence of significant mammoth hunting.”
Instead of a pole shift, or …
Mammoth and Rhino in Ancient Scotland
The main thrust of the article from The Scotsman is that human settlements dating to 14,000 years ago have been unearthed in Scotland – the oldest yet. But what stood out, for me, was this sentence:
This was a time when nomadic humans hunted giant elk and reindeer using bows and arrows, and when mammoth and rhino also roamed the land.
This is not new information, but is a reminder of how very different our world was not so long ago. Not only did we have megafauna that went extinct during the last cataclysm, we had species living a long way from where they live now. Why were there rhinos in Scotland at the tail-end of the ice age?
Flightless Sea Duck – Not Tasty?
The extinction of so many species during the great global cataclysm of 10-12,000 years ago has regularly been put down to lots of hunting, by orthodox science. Supposedly humans crossed the Bering Strait, worked their way south through the Americas, and killed most of the living things they came across. Until now the best argument from fringe science has been the sheer numbers of animals that perished, far more than the estimated numbers of humans could have found time to kill, let alone eat. Here’s the icing on the cake:
[Scientists have] demonstrated that humans first hunted the flightless sea duck (Chendytes lawi) more than 10,000 years ago, but the bird persisted until about 2,400 years ago. Their findings that Chendytes survived more than 7,500 years of human predation are based on the first radiocarbon dating of Chendytes bones from six coastal archaeological sites.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317150150.htm
I’m not a hunter, I’d sooner eat grass. …
Giant Wombat News
Up to 9 feet (3 meters) long and 70 inches (180 centimeters) tall, some of the marsupials weighed as much as a pickup truck and stood as tall as a person. Others were much smaller, about the weight of a compact car.
The news this week is that the huge difference in size is just gender-related, and that these wombats are of the same species.
This is just a reminder – 10-12,000 years ago the world was full of mega-fauna, and they all died out rapidly, in two areas – Asia/Australia and the Americas. Species in Africa survived. In a pole shift scenario there will be a fulcrum point where disturbances are relatively low, and 90 degrees away there will be chaos. Find a globe and use Angola and Hawaii as the fulcrum points, then spin the globe slowly. You’ll see the fastest movement is in Asia/Australia and the Americas, where mega-fauna …
Settlers Took a 20,000 Year Rest in Beringia?
According to the new theory, humans heading east after leaving Asia about 40,000 years ago were blocked by two huge glaciers that met at present-day Alaska.
With no way forward, the humans settled on the land bridge, called Beringia, that connected Asia and North America.
There they remained for 20,000 years. Beringia was cold and harsh, comparable to winters in modern-day Siberia. Small populations of mammoth, bison, caribou, and other animals provided sustenance for the migrants.
It’s a theory designed to make sense of some DNA research. In my mind it has a serious flaw – rather than spend 20,000 years in a cold, harsh place – why didn’t they just go back the way they came?
