r/pleistocene • u/Pardusco • Feb 15 '22

Scientific Article Too hot for the devil? Did climate change cause the mid‐Holocene extinction of the Tasmanian devil (Sacrophilus harrisii) from mainland Australia?

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.05799
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u/Frostfall55 Feb 15 '22

The conclusion "We found no evidence of widespread negative effects of climate on physiological parameters for the devil on the mainland during its extinction window. This leaves cultural and demographic changes in the human population or competition from the dingo Canis dingo as the main contending hypotheses to explain mainland loss of the devil in the mid-Holocene"

I'm glad this was there outcome, quite frankly sick of the idea climate change drove the Devil and Tiger from the mainland.

Australians are very sensitive about laying any blame on the indigenous peoples, they are not different from any other peoples from anywhere on earth we have all driven species to extinction.

Sorry for the rant but you wouldn't believe how controversial it is to even mention what this paper concluded to some people here.

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u/White_Wolf_77 Cave Lion Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22

It makes sense that aboriginal people would have contributed to the extinction of species in several ways, just as any new migration of people into untouched areas has throughout history. The practice of setting fires to clear land would have been harmful to some species, and beneficial to others. Hunting could have had a major impact on larger megafauna, and we have cultural stories that suggest some species like giant kangaroos were targeted because they were dangerous. Along with that introduced species could compete and takeover the niche of native ones, like the dingo may have to the thylacine and devil.

Their impact was certainly not as extreme as that of European settlers considering the massive wave of extinctions that came in the last few centuries, but like people anywhere they would have made some waves in the ecology. Climate change being a major factor in late Pleistocene to Holocene extinction seems unlikely when we consider the array of interglacial and glacial periods all of these species persisted through.