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Re: [dinosaur] Humans off the hook?

A Science news story http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/new-find-clears-madagascar-s-first-settlers-wiping-out-world-s-largest-bird quotes Ian Tattersall as saying that it's possible the find represents only a small group of humans on the island who did not have a long-term impact. They don't have any stone tools dating back that far. With such a long gap between this find and the earliest other record of humans, it may be a fair question to ask if those early settlers may have died out relatively soon, like the Norse Greenlanders.

-- Jeff Hecht



On Sep 13, 2018, at 9:52 AM, John Bois <mjohn.bois@gmail.com> wrote:

Re Elephant bird extinction...increasing aridity could have exposed the birds to more human predators...especially if this was relevant to their reproduction. So, I believe, we are not quite off the hook.

On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 3:11 PM Ben Creisler <bcreisler@gmail.com> wrote:

Ben Creisler


A new paper in open access:



James Hansford, Patricia C. Wright, Armand Rasoamiaramanana, Ventura R. PÃrez, Laurie R. Godfrey, David Errickson, Tim Thompson and Samuel T. Turvey (2018)
Early Holocene human presence in Madagascar evidenced by exploitation of avian megafauna.
Science Advances  4(9): eaat6925
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aat6925



Previous research suggests that people first arrived on Madagascar by ~2500 years before present (years B.P.). This hypothesis is consistent with butchery marks on extinct lemur bones from ~2400 years B.P. and perhaps with archaeological evidence of human presence from ~4000 years B.P. We report >10,500-year-old human-modified bones for the extinct elephant birds Aepyornis and Mullerornis, which show perimortem chop marks, cut marks, and depression fractures consistent with immobilization and dismemberment. Our evidence for anthropogenic perimortem modification of directly dated bones represents the earliest indication of humans in Madagascar, predating all other archaeological and genetic evidence by >6000 years and changing our understanding of the history of human colonization of Madagascar. This revision of Madagascarâs prehistory suggests prolonged human-faunal coexistence with limited biodiversity loss.


===


News:



New find clears Madagascar's first settlers of wiping out world's largest bird








Jeff Hecht, science and technology writer
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