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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Mouse In The Museum, Maggie Colangelo, Bernard Means Jan 2024

The Mouse In The Museum, Maggie Colangelo, Bernard Means

Virtual Curation Lab's Comic Publications

Find out about America's first successful public museum of art and natural history from a unique perspective: a mouse! The museum mouse guides you through Charles Willson Peale's Philadelphia Museum from its founding in his own home to its eventual establishment in what is now called Independence Hall. You will encounter a killer bear, an eagle that has seen better days, and the massive bones of an extinct elephant: the mastodon. This gripping tale is brought to you by Maggie Colangelo and Bernard K. Means, co-creators of Founding Monsters, Founding Monsters Tales, Mystery of the Missing Megafauna, and Tales from …


The Mystery Of The Missing Megafauna, Maggie Colangelo, Bernard Means Jan 2023

The Mystery Of The Missing Megafauna, Maggie Colangelo, Bernard Means

Virtual Curation Lab's Comic Publications

The creative team behind Founding Monsters and Founding Monsters Tales have created a new comic that takes a more scientific and less historic approach to the giant mammals that once roamed North America. The Mystery of the Missing Megafauna explores how changing climate impacted biodiversity and megafauna populations in North America at the end of the last Ice Age. Particular attention is placed on the extinction of mastodons, mammoths, giant ground sloths and other megafauna whose fossils are found at Saltville in southwestern Virginia. This comic draws a connection to contemporary climate change and the major extinctions happening today. The …


The Primitive Hunter Culture, Pleistocene Extinction, And The Rise Of Agriculture, Vernon L. Smith Jan 1975

The Primitive Hunter Culture, Pleistocene Extinction, And The Rise Of Agriculture, Vernon L. Smith

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The hypothesis that megafauna extinction some 10,000 years ago was due to "overkill" by Paleolithic hunters is examined using an economic model of a replenishable resource. The large herding animals that became extinct, such as mammoth, bison, camel, and mastodon, presented low hunting cost and high kill value. The absence of appropriation provided incentives for the wastage killing evident in some kill sites, while the slow growth, long lives, and long maturation of large animals increased their vulnerability to extinction. Free-access hunting is compared with socially optimal hunting and used to interpret the development of conservationist ethics, and controls, in …