2012 Blog » Megafauna

2012: Year of the Dragon

Robert Bast — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:09:03 +0000

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 or three hundred years ago and probably further back – were genuine encounters, but where the witnesses were seeing what I believe to have been huge snakes, giant crocodiles, and the Australian ‘monster lizard’ Megalania.”

Dragons: More Than a Myth is available at Amazon.

But what do dragons have to do with 2012?

The last two times the Long Count calendar ended, humans seem to have made great advances, and I have speculated that we evolved mentally, 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. A global cataclysm involving the Sun, the Earth’s magnetic field or a Galactic Superwave could include a mass influx of cosmic rays, leading to DNA damage and perhaps evolution.

Many evolved species could have been short-lived, because they weren’t quite right. Perhaps the unicorn and dragon were just that, mutated species that stuck around just long enough to become legend, but not long enough for us to have found fossil evidence?

2012: Year of the Dragon is a post from: 2012 Blog

Megafaunal Extinction – Still Unsolved

Robert Bast — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:40:02 +0000

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 the woolly mammoth”

The news release ends with an admission that it is still very much a mystery (unless you believe in global cataclysms…):

After all, each of these species, including those that went extinct at the end of the last ice age, had experienced similar if not larger climate fluctuations during previous ice ages. “Why, in this case, did they go all the way to extinction?” he asks. “It’s an intellectually interesting problem.”

Megafaunal Extinction – Still Unsolved is a post from: 2012 Blog

If the Spotted Horse was real, then…

Robert Bast — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:59:31 +0000

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 some artist’s imagination.

I’d be convinced, except they used the DNA of horses that survived the cataclysm.

Thankfully the team behind the original study decided to find older DNA and they hit the jackpot:

They found that 18 of the horses were bay, seven were black, but six had a genetic variant—called LP—that corresponds to leopard-like spotting in modern horses. Moreover, out of 10 Western European horses estimated to be about 14,000 years old, four had the LP genetic marker, suggesting that spotted horses were not uncommon during the heyday of cave painting.

All three color types appear in cave art, which means that they are accurate depictions of the horses of the day. The scientists have made the usual stabs at guessing why this breed of horses became extinct, but of course did not look at any catastrophic scenarios.

So, once more I am asking myself, were dragons and unicorns once real?

If the Spotted Horse was real, then… is a post from: 2012 Blog

Killer Koala Unearthed

Robert Bast — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:03:52 +0000

Photo courtesy of Australian Museum

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 after finding the remains of the massive Diprotodon at Floraville Station, on the Leichhardt River between Normanton and Burketown.

The Diprotodon, which was about the size of a four-wheel drive, was widespread across Australia and believed to co-exist with indigenous people until it became extinct about 25,000 years ago.

…”It potentially has information about how long the mega fauna may have survived in the northern part of Australia,” Prof Hand said.

“Because it’s so well preserved, there could be a lot of information that can be retrieved from it.” Prof Hand believed the discovery could also point to a prehistoric graveyard of other animals at the site.

“If you’ve got this much of a skeleton of one of these big beasts, and usually they’re quite dispersed and you don’t get them sitting there nicely, it suggests that some more work could turn up a mega faunal graveyard,” she said.

Killer Koala Unearthed is a post from: 2012 Blog

70 American Ancestors / Exploding Transformers

Robert Bast — Sat, 21 May 2011 20:30:46 +0000

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 – the US grid could be down for months, and that would be massive tragedy. More at SOTT.

70 American Ancestors / Exploding Transformers is a post from: 2012 Blog

Mammoth Killing Humans Caused Mini-Ice Age

Robert Bast — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:49:44 +0000

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…

Mammoth Killing Humans Caused Mini-Ice Age is a post from: 2012 Blog

Mammoths Survived the Cataclysm?

Robert Bast — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:47:13 +0000

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 ideas of the mammoths suffering from over-hunting, disease or climate change. Some cataclysmic theories are for a more recent period, and consequently this new evidence could potentially be supportive of “alternative” research.

Mammoths Survived the Cataclysm? is a post from: 2012 Blog

Decline in Megafauna Pre-Dates Clovis, Extraterrestrial Impact

Robert Bast — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:14:00 +0000

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 were either too old or too young to fit their hypothesis. This is an age-old problem – those that don’t fit are removed, and those that do are not as heavily scrutinised.

Before accepting this study, I’d want to see long-term graphs that indicate a very stable incidence of Sporormiella. Rather than a graph that starts just a few thousand years earlier and even then looks unstable.

I don’t know how they made the above graph from 9 samples, but although the eventual decline is obvious, I’m unsure that it shows the start of the decline as 14,800 years ago. The big drop at roughly 15,700 years ago is not mentioned and is almost as severe.

Finally, I don’t know what to make of this in the summary. After deciding that climate change and extraterrestrial impact were not the cause, the authors state:

What about people? It has long been argued that Clovis artifacts signal the first arrival of people in North America south of the boreal ice sheets and that the Clovis people were specialized big-mammal hunters who caused a crash of megafaunal populations from prehuman abundance to extinction within a few hundred years. This “blitzkrieg” scenario is supported by the fact that terminal dates on megafaunal fossils range from 13,300 to 12,900 years ago, which coincides almost exactly with the Clovis period. But the new data show that the megafaunal decline had begun more than a thousand years earlier. If people were responsible for that decline, they must have been pre-Clovis settlers. The existence of such people has been controversial, but archaeological evidence is slowly coming to light and is consistent with their arrival around the beginning of the megafaunal decline. It is beginning to look as if the greater part of that decline was driven by hunters who were neither numerous nor highly specialized for big-game hunting.

There were not enough hunters, nor did they have the skills, but it was them. Not very convincing!

Decline in Megafauna Pre-Dates Clovis, Extraterrestrial Impact is a post from: 2012 Blog

Stegomastadon: Another Unexplained Extinction

Robert Bast — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:46:00 +0000

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 have died naturally in such a small sector.”

“It could be the product of human activity,” he added.

Some scientists are still fixated on the “millions of animals, dozens of species, became extinct at the same time, because we ate them all” theory.

Or, similarly, we have the La Brea tar pits, which has the remains of 100,000 birds (138 species, 19 of which are extinct), 700 sabre-tooth tigers, and wolf skulls that average twenty per cubic yard. Because all these stupid animals supposedly got stuck in the asphalt. Oh yeah, and 3 species of fish!

Stegomastadon: Another Unexplained Extinction is a post from: 2012 Blog

Giant Lions Roamed Britain 13,000 Years Ago

Robert Bast — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:31:00 +0000

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

Giant Lions Roamed Britain 13,000 Years Ago is a post from: 2012 Blog