Life Sciences Commons^™

A Simulation Of Anthropogenic Mammoth Extinction, Matthew Klapman

Undergraduate Honors Papers

There are multiple hypotheses as to why the Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) and other megafauna in North America went extinct relatively recently and relatively quickly. The most popular of which are disease, climate change, meteorite strikes, and over hunting by humans [2, 9]. There is evidence to show that a combination of factors contributed to the megafaunal extinction, but ”overkill” explores the idea that early humans migrated onto the continent and then hunted the mammoths and other megafauna to extinction. The overkill hypothesis was first proposed by anthropologist Paul Martin in 1973 [8]. Evidence from radiocarbon dating shows that the …