<story><title>Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/science/climate-paleontology-mammals.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmayrgundter</author><text>Seems that Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis might fit these observations too.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We obtained radiocarbon dates on 172 specimens from seven extinct and one extant species... spanning 15.6 to 10.0 thousand calendar years before present (ka).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;YDIH event is estimated at 12900 BP and includes vast wildfires in its scenario, including in North America.&lt;p&gt;Contrast that with the idea that humans have been in Sapiens form for 200kya+, using fire for longer even than we have been Sapiens and have probably been in the Americas far before 13kya.  Is the idea that despite the capability, we only at this specific time started the extinction program?  At just the moment when there&amp;#x27;s sign of a globally catastrophic impact?&lt;p&gt;YDIH seems more parsimonious, yet the paper doesn&amp;#x27;t mention it.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Talk:Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Talk:Younger_Dryas_impact_hypo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ramraj07</author><text>Humans could have lived nicely in harmony for hundreds of thousands of years in times of abundance, and  when sudden cataclysms caused great famines or suffering they could have resorted to more drastic measures that caused large scale fires.&lt;p&gt;Doesn’t mean this is what I think happened, but sounds just as plausible as comets causing havoc to me.&lt;p&gt;In the end IMO this field has been greatly disserviced by Hancock. The yDIH just as well might have been the correct explanation but this guy won’t stop yapping about aliens alongside the same. So the “establishment” academics seem to be very wary of this hypothesis and being associated with him. Now it’s clear that’s dumb of the academics as well, they should be logical and choose the correct hypothesis no matter what flavor it associates them with. Sad that one of the likely most important times of human history has become so contentious due to human emotion and ego coming in the way of scientific rigor.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ancient fires drove large mammals extinct, study suggests</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/science/climate-paleontology-mammals.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pmayrgundter</author><text>Seems that Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis might fit these observations too.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We obtained radiocarbon dates on 172 specimens from seven extinct and one extant species... spanning 15.6 to 10.0 thousand calendar years before present (ka).&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;YDIH event is estimated at 12900 BP and includes vast wildfires in its scenario, including in North America.&lt;p&gt;Contrast that with the idea that humans have been in Sapiens form for 200kya+, using fire for longer even than we have been Sapiens and have probably been in the Americas far before 13kya.  Is the idea that despite the capability, we only at this specific time started the extinction program?  At just the moment when there&amp;#x27;s sign of a globally catastrophic impact?&lt;p&gt;YDIH seems more parsimonious, yet the paper doesn&amp;#x27;t mention it.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Talk:Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Talk:Younger_Dryas_impact_hypo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pmayrgundter</author><text>A little more reading..&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;All extinct mammals dated in this study have last occurrence dates older than 13.00 ka, with a modeled extirpation time estimate across all taxa of 13.07 to 12.89 ka [using the Gaussian-Resampled Inverse-Weighted McInerney (GRIMW) extinction estimator&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Even tighter bound than my comment and still a tight fit around 12900. Figure 1 in their paper shows this as well.&lt;p&gt;In other news, there was recently a &amp;quot;comprehensive refutation&amp;quot; of YDIH (pre-print) that a fave of my, Martin Sweatman, takes a good look at.&lt;p&gt;A lot of this debate comes down to careful dating, error bars, etc.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;martinsweatman.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;debunking-holliday-et-als-comprehensive.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;martinsweatman.blogspot.com&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;debunking-hollid...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>