Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of AmericaAs recently as 11,000 years ago—"near time" to geologists—mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age. Part paleontological adventure and part memoir, Twilight of the Mammoths presents in detail internationally renowned paleoecologist Paul Martin's widely discussed and debated "overkill" hypothesis to explain these mysterious megafauna extinctions. Taking us from Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon, where he finds himself "chest deep in sloth dung," to other important fossil sites in Arizona and Chile, Martin's engaging book, written for a wide audience, uncovers our rich evolutionary legacy and shows why he has come to believe that the earliest Americans literally hunted these animals to death. As he discusses the discoveries that brought him to this hypothesis, Martin relates many colorful stories and gives a rich overview of the field of paleontology as well as his own fascinating career. He explores the ramifications of the overkill hypothesis for similar extinctions worldwide and examines other explanations for the extinctions, including climate change. Martin's visionary thinking about our missing megafauna offers inspiration and a challenge for today's conservation efforts as he speculates on what we might do to remedy this situation—both in our thinking about what is "natural" and in the natural world itself. |
Contents
Overview of Overkill | 48 |
Ground Sloths at Home | 78 |
Mountain Goats Condors Equids | 100 |
Deadly Syncopation | 118 |
Kill Sites Sacred Sites | 148 |
Climatic Change versus Overkill | 165 |
Restoration | 179 |
The Past Is Future | 200 |
Other editions - View all
Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America Paul S. Martin Limited preview - 2005 |
Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America Paul Schultz Martin No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
African archaeological archaeologists Arizona Press artifacts associated Australia birds bison bones burros camelids carbon climatic change Clovis points condors deer deposit Desert Devender dung balls ecology elephants equids evidence extinct extinct animals extinct species fauna flightless fossil pollen fossil record genera genus giant glacial glyptodonts Grand Canyon ground sloth dung habitat Harrington's Haynes herbivores historic Holocene horses human arrival hunters hunting ice age islands juniper kill sites kilograms land large animals large mammals late Quaternary living MacPhee mammals mammoths mastodons Mead megafauna megafaunal extinctions Mexico million mountain goat Museum National Park native near-time extinctions North America P. S. Martin Pacific packrat middens paleontologists pellets plant Pleistocene pre-Clovis predators prehistoric proboscideans Quaternary radiocarbon dates radiocarbon years ago Rampart Cave range samples Shasta ground sloth South Stanton's Cave Steadman survived taxa tinctions tion Tucson University of Arizona Utah vertebrate West wild World Younger Dryas