what happened to all the big animals?

[Vietcong]

as in the name
what happened to all the big animals that lived in north America?

are thear any good theroys as to y thay all died out in north America*and Europe, Australia ect* but not Africa??

 

[Red Stranger]

What are you talking about? Large animals like dinosaurs died everywhere. Medium sized animals like Elephants and Bisons lived in Africa and America, respectivey.

 

[Xanikk999]

What are you talking about? Large animals like dinosaurs died everywhere. Medium sized animals like Elephants and Bisons lived in Africa and America, respectivey.

We had wooly rhinoceroses and elephants in north america also before they went extinct. Not to mention lions and tigers too.

 

[Ansar]

Like Mammoths and the like from IceAge? They dissapeared in the Meltdown.

 

[bhsup]

One theory is the arrival of humans in North America ultimately led to their extinction.

 

[Xanikk999]

Yeah if you read about prehistoric evolution you will realist north america and europe had a lot of animals that you can only find in africa nowadays.

Its hard to imagine there were rhinos, tigers, lions, and giant sloths roaming around here.

 

[Ansar]

Well, in Florida, it doesent sound so uncommon... We are part swamp, you know...

 

[Vietcong]

sorry, i mean animals like lions, camels, huge birds, kangeroos, ect.

 

[Zardnaar]

Are you talking about the Ice Age megafauna? Probably a double hit of climate change and human hunter/gathers wiped them out.

 

[skadistic]

Many of the large animals your thinking of are from the long ago period when the climate was vastly diffrent. The giant sloth of south america died out most likely by hunting. The whooly mammoth and rhino were subject to extream tempeture shifts, when the eath warmed relitivly quickly they couldn't shed thier furryness fast enough. Kangaroos and all other marsoupials (SP?) are distincly Austrailian coming about by the continents isolation from the rest of the world for so long. Huge birds weren't prevalent in the north america but is in the south. Lions for the most part died out by being hunted and running out of big game to hunt them selves. Noth america does still have 2 lion species alive, the westen "mountain lion" that has migrated east along with the coyote all the way to the coastal states and the florida panther. America had its own camels and horses but they all died out a long time ago. I quess the biggest culprot would be climate change leading to a disruption in the food chain, larger animals from the ice age going first then large preditors that hunted the massive animals and on and on and on.......kinda like this post.

 

[Vietcong]

y wholdnt some of the animals moved north into canada?

 

[The Yankee]

They either ran out of land when the glaciers retreated further north over the northern shorelines or people and other predators got to them. Or they were too slow, maybe. Or they didn't have any food for them in enough quantities further north.

It likely did not happen all at once. Probably took a large number of years, perhaps millenia, until there simply weren't enough of them to reproduce much more.

 

[skadistic]

y wholdnt some of the animals moved north into canada?

Not much in the way of food up there. Today there is farm land but say 20,000 years ago you would have had almost nothing but permafrost and ice. Some animals may have gone north like the wolverine and been able to adapt and over the years gone down in size over all. Lichen might be able to substain moose or elk for some time but an animal as big as many that are now long gone could not have found enough to eat thus starving out in the colder north or overheating in the warmer south. After the little ice age tep. change was too fast for many animals to cope. Some got lucky buy what thier diet was and found a nich for them selves like buffalo.

 

[Bluemofia]

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, they do a good job outlining it out.

The hunters in Africa, started out really unskilled and poor. So, while they were getting better, so were the animals they were hunting (at avoiding humans).

After humans got a lot better, and decided to migrate away to find their own living space.

Meanwhile... (back at North America, Australia, random islands in the Pacific)

The animals there had no previous contact with humans, so they are minding their own buisness, not caring about those silly hairless things running around, as they have no reason to fear them. Then they get speared, skewered, attacked, etc. by skilled them. Dead! Blitzkrieg hunting! Blah!

In otherwords, they have no expierence with human hunters, while humans already became relitivly skilled in hunting, and found them easy pickings for large meals. So, hunting to extinction! They could not adapt fast enough for the human hunters backed with thousands of years of expierence passed down from hunters in Africa, and with more modern tool making. (spears and arrows, rather than sticks and rocks)

 

[Zardnaar]

At a rough guees large animals didn't reproduce that fast either.

 

[taper]

A big part of it is the decreased oxygen in the atmosphere today. During prehisotric times O2 concentrations were much higher than they are now. This meant one lungfull of air could supply more pounds of flesh. If a dinosaur was cloned ala Jurassic Park, it would probably die.

 

[The Last Conformist]

The North American megafauna had survived the end of earlier ice ages, so it's hard to avoid the conclusion it was the presence of human hunters who made them bite it at the end of the most recent one.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

They were´killed by people with legal guns

 

[Erik Mesoy]

*pokes AL_DA_GREAT*
Nope. They were killed pretty much before guns came onto the scene.

Semi-obligatory Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafauna

 

[Dreadnought]

A big part of it is the decreased oxygen in the atmosphere today. During prehisotric times O2 concentrations were much higher than they are now. This meant one lungfull of air could supply more pounds of flesh. If a dinosaur was cloned ala Jurassic Park, it would probably die.

That's true? Never heard that.... thats pretty cool