Megafauna - Extinction While Humans Peopled NA - Fungus Tells the Tale
Submitted by bat400 on Monday, 30 November 2009 Page Views: 2760
DiscoveriesNews Releases About Prehistoric Megafauna Shed Light on the Environment of Early Americans - Fungus from Giant Excrement indicates decline before Humans.Also the Remains of:
Steppe Bison in Canada,
Elephant-like Gomphotheres in Mexico.
Submitted by coldrum -- From the Arizona Daily Star, a description of the butchering site of two Gomphotheres by Clovis era hunters. These animals were already becoming rare in North America when these creatures were killed. And from the Calgary Herald, the story of the carcass of a Steppe Bison from Ice-free Beringia so well preserved in a melting cliffside that its genetic linage can be determined.
The carcass of an extinct steppe bison, discovered two years ago melting out of a cliff in a remote village in the Northwest Territories, is shedding new light on the Ice Age species — and could rewrite the history of human migration in Canada as glaciers began retreating in the region nearly 14,000 years ago.
An analysis of the super-sized beast, larger than both the plains and wood bison which inhabited North America following the demise of its steppe-cousin, showed the specimen was one of the last of its kind in ancient Beringia — the ice-free, northwest corner of the continent that was once linked to eastern Siberia. But the rare find has implications for dating the retreat of the glaciers in northern Canada and the possible entry of human hunters from Asia into the continental interior.
The animal's distinctive skull and wide horns were largely intact, but more tantalizing were portions of preserved limbs, hide and intestines — soft tissue that permitted detailed genetic analysis allowing scientists to accurately situate the specimen in the evolutionary history of North America's bison populations.
"Based on the genetics, this animal was one of the last of the remaining steppe bison in Beringia," Yukon government paleontologist Grant Zazula told Canwest News Service. "Shortly after this, populations in the North are completely replaced by bison that evolved in the mid-continent."
What the find also shows is that the post-glacial ecosystem inhabited by the steppe bison must have supported large mammals earlier than previously known. That, say the scientists, suggests human hunters may well have entered the area around this time and — potentially — left traces of their own activities at sites still waiting to be found by archeologists.
(For more, see www.calgaryherald.com.)
Submitted by bat400 -- The secret is out: Man and gomphotheres once coexisted in Sonora, Mexico. Tools and spear tips found with fossil bones at a remote Sonoran site suggest that Clovis-era hunters butchered two juvenile specimens of the elephant-like megafauna about 13,000 years ago. It's the first discovery of such recent evidence of gomphotheres in North America, said Vance Holliday, a University of Arizona anthropologist.
It's also the first time gomphothere fossils were found together with implements made by Clovis people. Archaeologists from Mexico and the United States named the site "El Fin del Mundo," or "The End of the World."
Holliday said he was unsure if Clovis people were hunting gomphotheres or scavenging them. In either case, Holliday said, "this would be the first documentation that there was some sort of human interaction with gomphotheres in North America."
Holliday said the international team of archaeologists from the UA and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico City expect to complete excavation of the site this winter. Archaeologists have yet to find human fossil evidence of the culture they call Clovis, named for Clovis, N.M., where scientists uncovered the first distinctive spear tips from a period about 13,000 years ago. Now, scientists might be able to add the gomphotheres to the list of Clovis prey.
Gomphotheres were thought to have vanished from North America 100,000 years ago, said David Lambert, a biologist at the Louisiana School of Science, Mathematics and the Arts. "This is a Lazarus effect," he said. "Something disappears and then, out of the blue, pops up again."
(For more, see the www.azstarnet.com reprint from the Arizona Daily Star.) See comment below for how Excrement Fungus indicated a decline in Megafauna.
Note: Giant Beasts Roamed the Americas, but a Fungus in Core Samples says they were on their way to extinction Before Human Intervention.
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