Extinction of Australia’s thunder birds 40,000 years ago caused by failure to evolve with climate change
This is one of those long running screaming matches. The extinction of the megafauna everywhere and everywhen man turned up is one of those things. One side says man ate them. The other that primitve man, hunter gatherer, was in tune with the environment, lived on acorns a la Rousseau and couldn’t have done anything so mean as eat luvverly animals to extinction. Only modern man, corrupt[ted by capitalism and greed, could do that.
However Genyornis newtoni needed several extra years to fully grow and so its progression was still slow compared to most modern birds, that reach adult size in a year and can breed in the second year of life.
Slow growing, late sexual maturity, low reproduction rates. Hmm, just who do we think is likely to go extinct when a new apex predator turns up?
“However while Genyornis was better adapted than its ancestors and survived two million years … when arid and drought conditions were the norm, it was still slow-growing and slow-breeding compared to the emu.”
Worthy said different breeding strategies gave the emu a key advantage when their paths crossed with humans about 50,000 years ago,
Ah, see, even when it’s climate change to blame we still get those pesky humans in there too. You know, like the dodo, the moa, the Hawaiian geese(?) and all the other species that are killed off by climate change just after man turns up.
Early man was, just like us, a right bastard to the environment. That “hunter” bit you see? Rousseau was wrong. As in, I made you this Eden and I eated it.
What if there was wide variation? Could Jains thrive while adhering to nonviolence, even as Moghuls ran India? Were Jains able to persuade Moghul emperor Akbar to vegetarianism?
Is it pretty clear you’re looking for excuses to justify injustice?
Did the dinosaurs turn into birds because of man?
To me Oz’s megafauna were given the chop by the abos using bushfires to kill them without too much bother.
Alas after they killed the lot, they didn’t develop agriculture. But of course this meant that it wasn’t worth anyone’s while to conquer them.
The imperialists’d have to import their own colonists to establish their own tax victims, instead of just robbing the locals. Only the Brits thought this was worth the bother.
That’s why it amused me when I read that the Burmese—-oops Myanmarese refused to emigrate to Darwin during the 19th century. Perhaps their views might have changed since.
“Thunder Birds are gone!”
@Sam Vara – 🙂
rsm, 99% of all the species that have ever existed on planet Earth are gone. Extinct, no longer inhabiting Gaia, gone to meet their maker, shuffled off this mortal coil.
Man didn’t kill them, mother nature did, via drought, flood, heatwaves, earthquakes, asteroid strikes, plague, ice ages, solar radiation, reversal of the poles, bacterial infections (cont.p94).
It’d be good if just for once, people dropped their dogma-driven world view and accepted ‘man’s injustice’ is not the cause of the planet’s ills.
“Slow growing, late sexual maturity, low reproduction rates.”
Hmmm…. What other population group does that remind me of?
“The other that primitve man, hunter gatherer, was in tune with the environment …”
It provides a wonderfully accurate way to identify arseholes without any need to solicit their views on any other topic.
“Only the Brits thought this was worth the bother.” Three motives: (i) Somewhere to dump convicts once North America was unavailable. (ii) To deny it to the French. (iii) Hope for a base and supply of stores for the RN.
Sydney Harbour was indeed a wonderful place to park a navy but I don’t suppose Australia provided much in the way of new masts and rigging, did it? Fresh water, OK. Food, eventually.
It was just a happy fluke that Cook had explored the only sizeable bit of Oz that was worth much until the later mineral discoveries changed everything.
True dearieme. I understand the convicts were first going to be dumped at the mouth of the Vaal River. Fortunately the good old naval bloke sent to check the place pointed out that it was a shithole.
Even though it took a while to develop the necessary food production, there’s no doubt Sydney Cove was a much better bet. Except for the geographic position. But the Brits solved this one by swiping Cape Colony from the Dutch during the Napoleonic wars.
Since the abo women had plenty to carry, they had no use for gold. So once the effort was made, plenty of it was discovered. Thus there was no shortage of valuable minerals.
Indeed I’d argue that we Aussies were very well treated by you Brits. You made sure we owned the whole continent and provided us with a market for our horses in India and our wool in the UK. Which is why it was proposed that the Burmese provide the civilian settlers of Darwin. But they didn’t want it, thank God.
@rsm “Were Jains able to persuade Moghul emperor Akbar to vegetarianism?”
A quick look at the history of Akbar shows they didn’t, other than as part of a political move to please all hindus to keep his empire together.
The Jains were mainly left alone because they didn’t resist and folded over, as opposed to some other less …amenable.. lords in the region. Who fared… less well.. under the expansionist onslaught of Akbar.
Also.. I don’t think geopolitical issues of the late 16th and early 17th C have much relevance to whatever happened around the time mammoths were happily living and thriving in Doggerland while being hunted by our very-caucasian-and-thus-evil ancestors and the UK, except maybe the southwest, was an inhospitable swampy, frozen bit of uninteresting real estate that had as yet to thaw out in most places.
At the least you could get your geohistorical period right…
Dearieme: “The other that primitve man, hunter gatherer, was in tune with the environment …”
Oh, they were.. Had to be to survive..
It’s just that their ideas of “in tune with nature” bear no resemblance to the modern Woo version.
They were fully aware that Nature tried to kill them if given half a chance..
The lovely image of primitive Man living in pacific harmony, when violence, greed and cruelty only began appearing once we developed ‘civilisation’ and ‘money’ and other modern things, doesn’t survive scrutiny.
For example, the Yąnomamö of South America experience a homicide rate of 165 [murders per 100,000 population] while the rate for the Hewa of New Guinea is no less than 778. These violent deaths, in societies with few physical possessions, occur for several reasons. The most pervasive are individual acts of violence, most often over women (either wifestealing, or family members avenging a wife’s mistreatment by her husband) or vengeance for a relative’s death – often lethally combining.
Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: “My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder.” Such biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople and contributed to the acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew larger.”
(from Adam PJ, “Ultimately there is no escape from Power Politics. Discuss.”, MA submission, Staffordshire University 2015)
“But the Brits solved this one by swiping Cape Colony from the Dutch during the Napoleonic wars.” The first time we handed it back when peace broke out. Then the cloggies took the Corsican’s side when war broke out again so it wasn’t returned.
(I don’t suppose the cloggies were left much choice in the matter but there you are. Decisions have consequences.)
Actually archeology evidence now suggests that humans were in Australia by about 60 or even 70 thousand years ago . It’s more likely that the megafauna slowly died out from a combination of factors including climate as well as a small increase in predation by humans etc : ‘ the patient can have as many diseases as he bloody well wants’
@grikrath
At the least you could get your geohistorical period right…
C’mon, you are talking about rsm…
Hmmm…. What other population group does that remind me of?
Not so much slow growth but short life expectancy (18 years compared to 30-ish) and similar gestation period doomed H neanderthalis to be out-bred by H sapiens.
@ asiaseen
Much like H wasp will be out-bred by H mohammedan leading to the progressive dream of sexual perverts being dropped from tall towers en-masse.