Several species have gone extinct in the last 50,000 years due to this one human activity

New Delhi

Human activity has been found to be the reason why a host of large animals have gone extinct in the last 50,000 years. Climate change has often been blamed for these animals vanishing from the face of Earth. Nearly 161 species of large animals, including mammals, reptiles and birds, have vanished over this period of time. Known as megafauna, this group of animals consists of those that weigh at least 45 kilogrammes. Among these were megaherbivores, a species that once numbered 57 but today only 11 of them remain.

So how did human activity lead to the extinction of these animals? A recent study suggests that humans hunted these animals which ultimately acted as the reason for their decline and later the end. A research group from the Danish National Research Foundation's Center for Ecological Dynamics in a Novel Biosphere (ECONOVO) at Aarhus University undertook the study, taking into consideration various factors. 

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What did the study find?

What they found was unexpected. During the last interglacial and glacial periods, from 130,000 to 11,000 years ago, several species bore the brunt of the changing climate, however, something seemed to have had a bigger impact on the larger animals. 

Professor Jens-Christian Svenning, the lead author of the article, says that selective extinction of megafauna was not observed in previous ice ages. This observation ruled out climate change as being the main culprit for their extinction. "The large and very selective loss of megafauna over the last 50,000 years is unique over the past 66 million years," he says.

"Another significant pattern that argues against a role for climate is that the recent megafauna extinctions hit just as hard in climatically stable areas as in unstable areas," he added.

Why did large animals go extinct?

Scientists point to the evidence that supports that these animals were hunted. The discovery of large traps, analyses of ancient human bones and the presence of protein residues on spear points hint at the fact that humans ate mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths.

Besides, larger animals have longer gestation periods and take years to reach sexual maturity. This means that while they were being hunted down more and more, their population didn't increase at much in the same time period. 

Also, while species extinction happened at different times in different places, it consistently happened only after the arrival of modern humans at these places. However, Antarctica remained an exception.