[John H K]

The effects of the eruption would have been the LEAST negative on humans in Equatorial Africa....where chimps lived in the first place. It's hypothesized that most of the humans that survived also lived in Equatorial Africa; this is why Africa has more human diversity, much more, than anywhere else; A Norwegian and an Italian are more gentically similar, in many cases, than an African in one tribe and an African in another tribe a few miles down the road.

It's not unusual for extinction events to have a larger effect on some animals compared to others. For one thing, they tend to affect animals more the larger they are (witness dinosaurs and mammals) and humans are a little bigger than chimps.

[Sabertooth]

It's not unusual for extinction events to have a larger effect on some animals compared to others. For one thing, they tend to affect animals more the larger they are (witness dinosaurs and mammals) and humans are a little bigger than chimps.

Barely. This is weak. We're not talking aboout anything like the size difference between a Triceratops and possum.

[Don Joe]

"It's not unusual for extinction events to have a larger effect on some animals compared to others. For one thing, they tend to affect animals more the larger they are (witness dinosaurs and mammals)"

I don't know that it's at all relevant to the discussion, but when a pond "winterkills", it's the bigger fish that die off. The worse the kill, the smaller the victims, so with a "mild" kill, only the largest fish will die. The explantion I've heard is that larger fish need a disproportionatly greater level of oxygen than small fish. How/if this translates to air-breathers I do not know.