Recently extinct animals

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

Another variable not being mentioned is the effect that new species colonizing new regions/continents during the last glacial period would have had on the animals previously native there. While the impact this had is certainly variable in every situation, we must keep in mind that human migration alone is not the only factor. The connection of the Americas, for instance, saw a huge trade in fauna on both sides, and in at least some instances it will have been the new, non-primate colonizers who drove some species into extinction.

~Thylo

Yes, totally agree, the Great American interchange during the Cenozoic for example led to the mass extinction of many South American species.

In a broader sense we could instead of human migration say that it is mammalian migration (afterall humans are only just another mammal species) which has often been implicated in mass extinction events.

 

[TheMightyOrca]

I got my mind on the Eskimo curlew again. Like the passenger pigeon, it was once so numerous, but went extinct so quickly. I think stories like that are a testament to how people take nature for granted, and how people underestimate human impact on the rest of the natural world. I'm not very old, I just turned 28, but I'm already seeing some changes to the natural world that I don't like. You have animals and landscapes that are so ubiquitous that you just expect them to be around forever, but if people will it, they can disappear so quickly and all you'll have are the memories, and a young generation that can't lament its loss the way you do because they don't know what they're missing.

It’s crazy how the monk seal was declared extinct over 5 decades after it was last seen. Not denying you, just blown away.

Yeah, officially declaring a species extinct isn't done lightly. If there's even a slim chance that the species is still around, you can get more support for protecting its habitat. You don't want to lift those protections if the species could still be out there. If there are stricter fishing regulations in place with the specific intent of protecting, say, a dolphin, and the dolphin gets declared extinct, then those regulations are gonna get lifted. I'm pretty sure most organizations don't even consider declaring a species extinct until a certain period of time after the last confirmed sighting. Like, the Yangtze river dolphin and ivory-billed woodpecker are generally believed to be extinct, but the IUCN still lists them as critically endangered.

 

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

I got my mind on the Eskimo curlew again. Like the passenger pigeon, it was once so numerous, but went extinct so quickly. I think stories like that are a testament to how people take nature for granted, and how people underestimate human impact on the rest of the natural world. I'm not very old, I just turned 28, but I'm already seeing some changes to the natural world that I don't like. You have animals and landscapes that are so ubiquitous that you just expect them to be around forever, but if people will it, they can disappear so quickly and all you'll have are the memories, and a young generation that can't lament its loss the way you do because they don't know what they're missing.



Yeah, officially declaring a species extinct isn't done lightly. If there's even a slim chance that the species is still around, you can get more support for protecting its habitat. You don't want to lift those protections if the species could still be out there. If there are stricter fishing regulations in place with the specific intent of protecting, say, a dolphin, and the dolphin gets declared extinct, then those regulations are gonna get lifted. I'm pretty sure most organizations don't even consider declaring a species extinct until a certain period of time after the last confirmed sighting. Like, the Yangtze river dolphin and ivory-billed woodpecker are generally believed to be extinct, but the IUCN still lists them as critically endangered.

From what you've said here you seem to be observing or keenly aware of "the shifting baseline" phenomenon of decrease in biodiversity and population declines of species and you seem to feel strongly about it too (which is great in my opinion).

My advice is that you should consider becoming involved in conservation if you are not already and you are in a great region to do it as there is a lot of biodiversity around you in Texas so lots of work to do and species to help conserve.

 

[Westcoastperson]

Correct that there were lions in Ancient Greece and across into parts of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Carpathians, the Caucasus and Turkey / Anatolia.

However, I don't think I've ever heard of any monkeys or elephants (except for tamed pets brought from Egyptian traders or brought back with Alexander the Great as working animals in the case of elephants) that were present during the time of the Ancient Greek civilization or even the earlier Minoan and Mycenean civilizations and I've definitely never heard that there were wild populations.

Where did you hear / read this or are you referring to the presence of these animals in earlier epochs ?

There were elephants in ancient Greece around the time that hominid migrations would have occurred but there is no evidence linking their extinction to humans. Ther have been macaque remains found in Greece and the rest of Europe but it's hard to find anything about those findings so if you do know about it please send me the source because all I can find is Barbary Macaque information.

I think what you are referring to is the phenomenon of ecological naivete or "island tameness" which as the name suggests is usually encountered with species that inhabit islands that have not previously been colonized by human beings and therefore these species don't respond as if humans are predators which leads to overexploitation and typically extinction.

Modern human migrations into Eurasia during the Ice age wouldn't have encountered prey species that were ecologically naive as the continent had for thousands and thousands of years been inhabited by the neanderthals (and earlier still Homo heidelbergensis) who were proficient hunters of big game.

The arrival of modern humans in Eurasia did bring new challenges to the fauna which had not been previously faced with the neanderthals though.

Namely the new species brought far more technologically sophisticated hunting weapons and greater cognitive skills and social organization (not to mention the eventual domestication of the dog) which would have made for far more efficient hunting capturing more prey and therefore having a greater impact on populations.

However, it hasn't exactly been definitively proven that the arrival of modern humans and their hunting caused the extinction of the Ice age megafauna either...

What is a more likely scenario is that human hunters would have been an additional stressor that compounded populations that were already facing severe existing environmental stressors such as climate change which ultimately would have been the principal cause of extinction .

In North America the situation is equally complex and while there may have been ecological naivete with the megafauna that the first humans encountered on the continent it similarly hasn't been definitively proven that the arrival of humans caused these extinctions.

It is very odd that many of these North American species became extinct relatively soon after the arrival of humans but at the moment it is only one compelling hypothesis that humans were the cause of mass extinction amongst many other compelling hypothesis and theories that have been suggested (climate change, zoonotic spillover etc).

No, I am not referring to island tameness I already sent a link to a site that could explain this well-established hypothesis better than I could. You are correct we don't have direct evidence to link these two events together I just brought up the leading theory as to why the correlation occurs. I am also not doubting that there were other factors at play like the Great American Interchange and the habitat loss caused by the end of the younger dryas. But we do have evidence of humans hunting species like equids and elephants so it is very possible they had a larger impact then you may think. The reality is what I have stated is a leading hypothesis but just a hypothesis at that. Right now I can't prove it is entirely correct and you can't prove it is entirely incorrect. We can leave that to the scientists who are currently debating this exact subject. So for now I believe it's a good way to explain the extinction patterns that correlate with the arrival of hominids and why some species already on colonized land stayed alive.

Another variable not being mentioned is the effect that new species colonizing new regions/continents during the last glacial period would have had on the animals previously native there. While the impact this had is certainly variable in every situation, we must keep in mind that human migration alone is not the only factor. The connection of the Americas, for instance, saw a huge trade in fauna on both sides, and in at least some instances it will have been the new, non-primate colonizers who drove some species into extinction.

~Thylo

Yes colonization by other species did impact some species. Scientists theorize that the American interchange and the Bering land bridge allowed new species to come into America, and some of the residents to migrate out of North America. North American equids were displaced by the booming populations of Bison and the camelids crossed Beringia into Asia (Dromedaries, Bactrians) and went down into South America (Llamas, Guanacos, Vicunas). But it should be noted that both of those species have been found to have been hunted by humans and North American Camelids disappeared just after humans arrived.

 

[Onychorhynchus coronatus]

There were elephants in ancient Greece around the time that hominid migrations would have occurred but there is no evidence linking their extinction to humans. Ther have been macaque remains found in Greece and the rest of Europe but it's hard to find anything about those findings so if you do know about it please send me the source because all I can find is Barbary Macaque information.

I don't mean to be pedantic but there is a big difference (of thousands upon thousands of years) between elephants occurring in Greece / the Mediterranean (and mammoths in the rest of Eurasia) at the time of early hominid migrations and these occurring at the time of civilized Greece.

In your previous comment you stated that there were elephants and monkeys inhabiting Greece at the time of civilized Greece which implies that this was during the Ancient Greek civilization and obviously that is not correct.

Before hominids arrived in Europe the last primates that had inhabited the continent had occurred during the Miocene and previous to this there were macaques and other primates in Eurasia during the Pliocene and Pleistocene.

No, I am not referring to island tameness I already sent a link to a site that could explain this well-established hypothesis better than I could. You are correct we don't have direct evidence to link these two events together I just brought up the leading theory as to why the correlation occurs. I am also not doubting that there were other factors at play like the Great American Interchange and the habitat loss caused by the end of the younger dryas. But we do have evidence of humans hunting species like equids and elephants so it is very possible they had a larger impact then you may think. The reality is what I have stated is a leading hypothesis but just a hypothesis at that. Right now I can't prove it is entirely correct and you can't prove it is entirely incorrect. We can leave that to the scientists who are currently debating this exact subject. So for now I believe it's a good way to explain the extinction patterns that correlate with the arrival of hominids and why some species already on colonized land stayed alive.

Fair enough and yes that is true that scientists are far from having proven decisively any theory for the extinction of North American megafauna.

It is a really fiercely debated subject actually and there have been so many theories proposed over the years of which many are compelling so until there is strong evidence that proves one of these arguments over all the rest we will never know the answer.

Personally I do think that the arrival of humans probably played a role in mass extinction of megafauna but I think that the question is was the arrival of humans solely to blame or was overexploitation just one of a host of stressors that compounded populations already in decline due to some broader environmental issue?

 

[thylacine1936]

So I was digging in google and I manage to find this really rare Schomburgk's deer photo,probably the 5th known photo of the species.I really didnt know where else to post it.Is probably the same individual as the other 4 known photos in the Berlin Zoo.