In the late 1600s, in the lush forests of Mauritius, the very last dodo breathed its last. After centuries of incredible excitement in the tropical subterranean, the species found its untimely end in the hands of humans who arrived on the island less than 100 years ago. With their zeal for hunting, habitat destruction, and the liberation of invasive species, humans thwarted millions of years of evolution, and quickly removed this bird from the face of the earth.
Since then, Dodo has nestled itself in our conscience as the first leading example of human extinction. We’ve also used dodo to admit our own guilt: the animal is fat, lazy and vague – and according to popular story, those traits seal its inevitable fate.
“But in fact, we shouldn’t be more wrong,” said Julian Hume, a paleontologist and research collaborator with the National History Museum in the United Kingdom. He studies the remains of extinct species, and devotes part of his career to repairing Dodo’s desperate reputation. By digitally modeling the remains of the Dodo skeleton, he a 3D digital reconstruction It paints a completely different picture of a bird that was faster, more athletic and Very intelligent Believe us than popular culture. Hume told Live Science, “It wasn’t like this big, fat and boring thing moving around. This bird was very adaptable to the atmosphere of Mauritius.” Instead, the relentless exploitation of men was the real culprit behind Dodo’s untimely death.
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But that’s not all we did wrong. Despite popular belief, the dodo was not the first animal to become extinct – not by a long shot. In fact, humanity was erasing the world’s fauna thousands of years ago before we looked at Dudu. “There was a lot going on before and even before that event,” Hume said.
So, if the iconic dodo wasn’t the first species we saw on the edge, then which animal gets this disappointing title?
Humans on the move
As a relatively recent trend in our history we have become accustomed to thinking about the extinction of human-operated species. Yet, researchers have found convincing paleontological evidence that would dispel that idea.
Hume said, “The real problem started when we started migrating as human beings. That starting point is still under discussion, but most recent estimates suggest that the migration leading to a permanent human population around the world began with the Hominids movement.” Neanderthals And other ancient human relatives as well Homo sapiens – Outside of Africa and Southeast Asia, About 125,000 years ago. This is where the evidence becomes interesting. As humans left their ancestral home, and thousands of years later in the colonies of Eurasia, Oceania, North and South America below, fossil records show a parallel reversal of extinction in large-bodied animals – also known as megafuna – across those continents.
“Like [hominids] By migrating out of Africa, you’ll see this incredible regular way of extinction, “said Felisa Smith, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of New Mexico. As explained in the 2018 study, every time our ancestors set foot in new places, fossil records show that large-bodied species – ancient prehistoric relatives Elephants, Bear, Antelope and other creatures – most of which began to become extinct in a few hundred to 1000 years. Such rapid extinction periods have not occurred at any other stage in the last few million years (since no one was erased by avian extinct dinosaurs) Asteroids About a million 65 million years ago.) “Humans are involved only when you see them, which is really amazing,” Smith said.
Some of those early lost species look like fictional animals if they orbit the earth today. For example, “there was something like the Armadillo called the Glypton, which was the size of a Volkswagen bus,” Smith told Live Science. Gliptodens, armed with many sinful-looking spiked tails, disappeared from the Americas almost at the end of the Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago – probably linked to the earlier arrival of humans there. The number of giant Eurasian cave bears, many hundreds of pounds heavier than the grizzly bears today, has declined almost a quarter of a century since humans began to spread to their habitats. At one time South America was home to a long campaign of huge houses – and even humans were candidates about 11,000 years before his death.
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What made large animals so sensitive to the spread of humanity in particular? Presumably Megafow represents food or a threat to incoming humans. Moreover, animals that had never encountered humans before were probably unaware of these strange arrivals migrating to their undivided lands, which could increase their susceptibility to attack. Unlike other animals, which breed more quickly, megafunas also reproduce more slowly and are therefore less populated than other species, Hume explained: ” [a population] They cannot reproduce quickly enough to recreate numbers. “
It was not only the prey that posed a threat – but also the spread of human-fire that would have destroyed habitats, and the growing competition for food by humans. For example, it is believed that a growing number of hungry humans, heavily dependent on similar herbivores, became a formidable species in South America that once stood at a height of 10 feet (meters meters) and died about 11,000 years ago. Climate change, coupled with human influences such as hunting, also proved to be a deadly combination for some megaphae – the most famous, mammoths, which became extinct about 10,500 years ago (except the dwarf ool mol moth, which survived about 4,000 years ago). Island off northern Russia). “If you combine climate change with the negative human impact, it’s a disaster,” Hume said. Hume said.
The answer?
All this is to say that humans have systematically destroyed the species around us from almost the beginning of our history. Our migration “caused tragedy all over the world,” Hume said. “We weren’t very pleasant.” Unfortunately, we have continued the legacy of our ancestors, from thousands of other species, 1,000 years before the extinction of the Madagascan hippos, the loss of the Moa birds in New Zealand. 600 years ago, And decimation Traveler pigeons 106 years ago. We are also responsible for the extinction that is going on today.
But this still does not answer the question of which species is extinct First. And here’s the catch: data on man-made extinction on Earth is reliable after about 100,000,000 years – but that doesn’t mean we weren’t running for extinction in Africa either. In fact, before humans migrated, there was compelling evidence to suggest that they had released their hunting instincts to the species there as well.
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Smith’s research shows that the average body size of African animals 100,000,000 years ago was only half of the species found in other parts of the world. “Africa is one of the largest continents, so its original body size should be similar to that of the Americas and Eurasia where it was about 100 kilograms. [220 lbs.]”Smith said.” The fact is that this does not indicate that megafuna in Africa was already affected by hominids 1 year, 100,000 years ago. ”
In essence, the rest of history shows that humans are good at sending the largest creatures in the ecosystem, so we can safely assume that hominids in Africa at that time could be responsible for even more extinction over time.
Still, there’s no way to be sure what those ‘first’ species would have been – although Smith has wildly speculated: “It was probably some species in the elephant family. I can’t say. “
Links to the future
We may not have a clear answer to that basic question – but perhaps most important is to ask whether the legacy of humanity’s extinction can teach us about conservation, going into the future.
Past extinctions have revealed that when animals – especially megaphains – disappear, dark ecological consequences ensue. With changes in vegetation and species diversity, complete landscapes change in the absence of shape effects. There is also Smith Published research With potentially mutable consequences for the global atmosphere – showing that the amount of methane they cut has decreased over the last thousand years due to the decline of global megafunas. What’s more, when the animals disappear, the entire rafts of the dependent species go down with them. The iconic Dodo presents one such cautionary tale: one when the birds die, one Mauritian dung beetle That depends on Dodo feces for survival.
Understanding past man-made extinctions can help us understand what the environmental consequences have been, and how we can limit them in the future by protecting the remaining species. The extinction of dodo also provides clues that help us survive today. Hume is working on a project to create a list of pollen particles in the silt around Dodo. Remains, To create a detailed picture of the lush, palm-fringed forests they once roamed. It helps conservationists to help rebuild the island from what it once was. “We are reconstructing certain species of plants and trees from the environment in which Dudo actually lived, before the advent of humans,” Hume said.
A small part of heaven was lost when we led Dodo to extinction – not to mention the thousands of species that came before his death. But perhaps out of ambiguity and a desire to learn from our mistakes, some of them can be reclaimed.
Published on Original Living Science.
