This video from the USA says about itself:
In 2005, fossilized mastodon remains were discovered in Pratt’s Wayne Woods Forest Preserve in Wayne. During the course of a habitat-improvement project, a contractor for the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County made an initial discovery – teeth from a mastodon. With help from the Illinois State Museum, a science team visited the site to search for more fossils. This search unearthed a partial rib and pieces of bone and tusk. Watch the video to learn about the initial discovery.From Discover Magazine:
Spores in Mastodon Dung Suggest Humans Didn’t Kill Off Ancient MammalsDear Discover Magazine, was it mastodon dung or mammoth dung? Though both are related to elephants, they are not the same species or genus. The BBC is also confused about this.A fungus found within ancient mammoth dung
is providing scientists with clues about how the large ancient mammals collectively known as megafauna went extinct. The fungus, Sporormiella, produces spores in the dung of large herbivores. These are then preserved in the layers of mud and can provide an index of the number of these animals, or megafauna, that roamed the environment at a particular time [BBC News]. For a new study, researcher Jacquelyn Gill collected and analyzed spores in sediment samples from an Indiana lake and several sites in New York.See also here. And here. And here.From Gill’s analysis, published in the journal Science, she concluded that North American megafauna began a slow decline around 15,000 years ago and vanished about 1,000 years later. The data suggests megafauna started going extinct much earlier than previously though, which basically wipes out two theories of their extinction.
There are several theories surrounding the extinction of North American megafuana, but there are a lot more questions than answers. Much of the uncertainty surrounding the extinction of the North American megafauna, which includes mastadons, saber-tooth tigers and giant ground sloths, is due to a scarcity of evidence and difficulty pinning down the timing of events. Several major events occurred around the same time the animals disappeared: Major environmental upheaval associated with the end of the Ice Age; an asteroid explosion over North America; and the arrival of man [Wired.com]. But the new data points to an extinction culprit other than an asteroid or comet impact, because the impact is believed to have occurred long after the megafauna began their decline.
If humans were responsible for the extinction, it would have to be settlers that came along before the Clovis people, which is another debate in itself. The Clovis culture is thought to have been the first civilization to take hold in North America around 13,300 years ago–after the bulk of the megafauna extinctions, according to the new analysis. But some researchers believe that earlier settlers walked the land before the Clovis people, and could have hunted the mastodons and mammoths. The new study adds crucial info to the fossil record, but it is likely to kindle, rather than quench, the debate over megafauna extinction.
