I highly recommend the book "Ghosts of Evolution" about the lingering effects of these extinct megafauna on our lives today. Many of our ecosystems and even many species evolved in response to their presence.<p>A major theme of the book is how many of the fruits we see today (especially avocados, osange oranges, honey locust pods, possibly mangoes and many other large fruits) originally evolved to be eaten by megafauna. The idea is they would eat the fruit whole and swallow the pit, and poop it out somewhere. Evidence for this is that many of the trees have defenses against non-megafauna eating the fruits, or others have out-of-proportion defenses against any living animal today, the fact that many pits will only grow if they have been scoured (for example by the digestive system of an animal), and that the pits often seem over-defended, and the fact that many of these fruits are not eaten by any living animals and often fall from the tree and rot in place.
This article is poorly written, bringing up Paraceratherium is disingenuous considering they went extinct 23 mya. It took 400 years after Columbus for the American Bison population to drop to near extinction, not 70 years.<p>Do people upvote articles without reading them?
If you're wondering how overkilling can happen, the Romans killed 9,000 wild animals (lions, bears, etc) in <i>one</i> day during an opening event for the colosseum. And proceeded to sport kill thousands after: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colosseum</a><p>I can imagine exotic and big game has been the prime target of humans for a very long time.
A terrible article about a fascinating subject.<p>I am inclined to give the benefit if the doubt in the whole " The only place megafauna has survived to some extent to the present day is in Africa where people traditionally have lived in harmony with nature". In many hands that would be hippy happy pseudo racist claptrap. And it might be but the next paragraph points to the more realistic "harmony with nature = avoiding humans"<p>I have severe doubts about the overkill theory - the fossil record is fairly sketchy and so many species died out within a few hundred thousand years of us arriving on the scene that exact timings are hard to believe. On top of which the practicality seems a bit hard - I can accept that some creatures might be defenceless against men and spears (giant sloths seem likely to lose out) but I am going to struggle seeing sabre tooth tigers as easy prey for man.<p>Climate change, Eco system collapse and diseases carried by apes and their dogs seem to hold the occam razor prize for most likely explanations. A spear through the kidneys would just be making a bad day at the office worse for megafauna.
"The only place megafauna has survived to some extent to the present day is in Africa where people traditionally have lived in harmony with nature."<p>Bullshit.<p>From what I understand it's attributable to megafauna evolving alongside humans as they emerged in Africa. They had time to "learn" how to survive in the face of this new predator. In places like North America humans slaughtered and multiplied faster than their prey could adapt.