Posted on 12/04/2014 6:03:43 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A re-dating of mastodon bones reveals that the extinct mammals, related to the modern day elephant, disappeared from the area during a glacial period more than 50,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Existing age estimates of American mastodon fossils indicate that these extinct relatives of elephants lived in the Arctic and Subarctic when the area was covered by ice caps—a chronology that is at odds with what scientists know about the massive animals' preferred habitat: forests and wetlands abundant with leafy food...
Over the course of the late Pleistocene, between about 10,000 and 125,000 years ago, the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) became widespread and occupied many parts of continental North America as well as peripheral locations like the tropics of Honduras and the Arctic coast of Alaska. Mastodons were browsing specialists that relied on woody plants and lived in coniferous or mixed woodlands with lowland swamps...
All of the fossils were found to be older than previously thought, with most surpassing 50,000 years, the effective limit of radiocarbon dating. When taking mastodon habitat preferences and other ecological and geological information into account, the results indicate that mastodons probably only lived in the Arctic and Subarctic for a limited time around 125,000 years ago, when forests and wetlands were established and the temperatures were as warm as they are today...
The work has several implications. Researchers know that giant ground sloths, American camels, and giant beavers made the migration as well, but they are still investigating what other groups of animals might have followed this course. The new report also suggests that humans could not have been involved in the local extinction of mastodons in the north 75,000 years ago as they had not yet crossed the Bering Isthmus from Asia.
(Excerpt) Read more at popular-archaeology.com ...
Megafaunal mammals including the American mastodon (rear center), Jefferson’s ground sloth (front center and right), the flat-headed peccary (front left), and the western camel (rear left) extended their habitat into northern latitudes during the last interglacial period, around 125,000 years ago. Image courtesy of George Teichmann.
Lieberal: Argh! Another thing we can’t blame mankind for.
Only until this date for human arrival is corrected.
Sounds like a radical mastodonectomy
:’) This story appears to be some head-scratching about why the mastodon spread into the Americas from Asia but didn’t linger in Beringia, despite not being hunted, or rather ‘over-hunted”.
I thought I didn’t do it, but I mastodon it.
I don’t believe any of this, though the mastodon remnants that I have seen suggest so. I always thought they were contemporaneous with Mammoth at least in the later years.
I’ve heard of mastodon teeth recovered in Ohio and Kentucky at depths of 25 feet or greater. That implies they were here.
Most of these idiots suggest hunters killed off all the mega-fauna. Utterly nonsense. It’s incredible the human race barely survived the short face bear alone.
That was excellent... Clap, clap, clap
If anyone is interested in ancient geography and continental drift (very cool series-I’m going to watch again):
http://www.hulu.com/watch/383248
It was those blood thirsty, nasty H. Sapiens that killed them off and poisoned the Earth.
No doubt humans were in North America way, way, WAY before Clovis!
But to be honest with you, I’m starting to think we didn’t come from over the Bering strait.
We came up across the Isthmus of Panama!
IOW, humans in SA predate humans in NA.
Exhibit "A"
Exhibit "B"
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy,
Was he?
wow, I like it! I heard that they haven’t gotten to “scan” the whole ocean floor though. Hey, why are the oceans rising or why are the plates sinking? Also, if the earth is growing (at the rate that the himalayans are rising?) then shouldn’t the same readings be taken at all other points? Also, what effect does growing have on the magnetic field? does lava expand after it cools like water? where was all the water when the plates were together and the earth was small?
I’ll read up on it.
We came up across the Isthmus of Panama!
IOW, humans in SA predate humans in NA.
Maybe.
The number of isolated ecosystems that had a massive extinction event shortly after humans arrived is quite amazing: Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, etc.
The Americas would of course be by far the largest, and it’s always seemed a little illogical to me that pre-technological humans could accomplish such a massive extinction, but there is considerable evidence of a connection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event
Most of these megafauna had been around for one or two million years, including multiple glacial/interglacial cycles, then all disappeared within a short time after humans appeared in the area.
Obviously there are other explanations put forward, and the chronology might not be as tight as sometimes portrayed, but it is an amazing coincidence.
A fascinating conundrum.
My personal favorite part of the notion is that it makes the Indians responsible for a very large mass extinction.
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