Download Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America AudioBook Free
As lately as 11,000 years back - "close to time" to geologists - mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, surface sloths, big armadillos, local camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what is becoming one of science's biggest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and SOUTH USA around enough time humans attained the end of the previous great ice time. Part paleontological adventure and part memoir, Twilight of the Mammoths presents in detail internationally renowned paleoecologist Paul Martin's generally mentioned and debated "overkill" hypothesis to explain these strange megafauna extinctions. Taking us from Rampart cave in the Grand Canyon, where he discovers himself "chest deep in sloth dung", to other important fossil sites in Arizona and Chile, Martin's interesting book, written for a wide audience, uncovers our wealthy evolutionary legacy and shows why he has come to believe the earliest Us citizens virtually hunted these animals to fatality.As he talks about the discoveries that brought him to this hypothesis, Martin relates many bright colored stories and provides a rich overview of the field of paleontology as well as his own exciting career. He explores the ramifications of the overkill hypothesis for similar extinctions worldwide and examines other explanations for the extinctions, including environment change. Martin's visionary thinking about our absent megafauna offers motivation and an issue for today's conservation efforts as he speculates on what we may do to remedy this example - both inside our thinking about what's "natural" and in the natural world itself.This book is released by University of California Press.
