john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

megafauna

  • "I would run screaming away"

    Thu, 2011-05-26 07:42 -- John Hawks

    This is such an incredible story about the "Clovis comet" hypothesis, I don't know where to start: "Comet Theory Comes Crashing to Earth".

    Oh, well how about we start with the fact that the idea's main exponent is living under an alias:

    Indeed, the team’s established scientists are so wedded to the theory they have opted to ignore the fact their colleague “Allen West” isn’t exactly who he says he is.

    West is Allen Whitt — who, in 2002, was fined by California and convicted for masquerading as a state-licensed geologist when he charged small-town officials fat fees for water studies. After completing probation in 2003 in San Bernardino County, he began work on the comet theory, legally adopting his new name in 2006 as he promoted it in a popular book. Only when questioned by this reporter last year did his co-authors learn his original identity and legal history. Since then, they have not disclosed it to the scientific community.

    Well, the whole thing was thoroughly vetted by the National Academy member who coauthored the paper, right?

    After the theory was first announced in 2007 in Acapulco, Mexico, [Vance] Holliday had attempted to collaborate with [NAS member James] Kennett to test the idea. But Kennett effectively blocked publication of the study last year after the results didn’t support the comet theory.

    Err...well...you certainly can't dispute the physical evidence, right? I mean, what about the high concentration of carbon spherules that were associated with the supposed impact?

    On March 25, Boslough reported that radio-carbon dating of a carbon spherule sample shows it is only about 200 years old — an “irregularity” that indicates is it not from the alleged 12,900-year-old impact time.

    This means that a sample from a layer purporting to show a high concentration of spherules at the inception of the Younger Dryas actually only was about as old as the Declaration of Independence.

    The article discusses whether the carbon spherules may have been deliberately "salted" into the samples by someone, presumably West/Whitt himself. The quote I pulled as the title of my post, "I would run screaming," comes from another geologist asked whether he would work with West on anything.

    This story has really unraveled into a geological version of Piltdown. Like Piltdown, there were many people who were outright skeptics from the start -- because the evidence just didn't make sense. And like Piltdown, there are true believers who will not give up even after the physical evidence is shown to be questionable, possibly doctored.

    Anyway, I've written about this several times:

    "A hard bolide to swallow?"

    "The Younger Dryas impact fizzle?"

    You can tell when I really think an idea is nonsense: all the blog post titles end with a question mark!

    Tags: 
    megafauna
    America
    metascience
    extinction
    American Indians
    Clovis
    impacts
    Synopsis: 
    The Clovis impact hypothesis runs off the rails as the strange background of its main proponent comes to light

  • Storkicide

    Tue, 2011-01-25 23:17 -- John Hawks

    I have to point to Robert Krulwich's blog post, "Killer Storks Eat Human Babies", about the giant extinct Maribou stork relatives of Flores.

    When the discovery of those stork bones was reported last month, the British tabloids went carnivore-crazy. The headline writers assumed (why not?) these birds ate people. "Giant Stork 'preyed on Flores hobbits,'" cried The Telegraph. "Stork that ate babies," said The Independent "rather than delivering them." The headlines suggested that human babies had been standard birdy breakfasts — a powerful image, for sure...

    He doesn't take the story seriously, and has Brian Switek explain the total lack of any evidence that hobbits were crushed in stork crops. Anyway, the pictures are delightful. For example:

    Hobbit stork worship

    Oh, yes. But I have a better one:

    Hobbit birth story

    I got this one from David Frayer last year, and haven't really had an occasion to use it. I suppose we can call it an origin myth.

    Tags: 
    Homo floresiensis
    hobbits
    megafauna
    Flores

  • Rewilding Siberia

    Tue, 2010-12-07 07:30 -- John Hawks

    The Associated Press ran an article last week about Sergey Zimov and his attempts to "rewild" a small corner of Siberia:

    Of his first herd [of Yakutian horses], Zimov said 15 were killed by wolves and bears, 12 died from eating wild hemlock that grows in the park, and two slipped through the perimeter and made their way back some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) to their original pastures.

    It's tough to manage these animals without acting as if they were domesticated. He's talking about bringing in bison from North America, of course most of these are extensively managed. It would probably be more realistic to pursue an economic model where the "megafauna" paid for its own management. Maybe that would get in the way of tigers and bears, though.

    Tags: 
    climate
    megafauna
    climate change
    Pleistocene

  • Extinct marsupial lion in Australian rock art

    Tue, 2009-05-26 08:53 -- John Hawks

    Speaking of super-predators from the past, Natural History Magazine has a short article describing Australian rock art that may depict the extinct marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex:

    Kim Akerman, an independent anthropologist based in Tasmania, says the painting unmistakably depicts a marsupial lion.

    It shows the requisite catlike muzzle, large forelimbs, and heavily clawed front paws. And it portrays the animal with a striped back, a tufted tail, and pointed ears.

    The image is described in a brief and readable report in the March issue of Antiquity.

    Tags: 
    art
    Australia
    megafauna
    extinction

  • Bringing back the overkill

    Sat, 2009-01-10 23:23 -- John Hawks

    New Scientist has a primer on extinct animals that might be candidates for resurrection by cloning. My preference is the short-faced bear:

    This towering beast would dwarf the world's largest living land carnivore, the polar bear. The short-faced bear may have been a third taller than the polar bear when standing upright, and it weighed up to a tonne. Recovering its DNA should be possible as there are specimens encased in permafrost. The short-faced's closest living relative is the spectacled bear of South America. The two species parted evolutionary company only around 5 million years ago, but unfortunately, at just a tenth the body mass of the short-faced bear, the spectacled bear is unlikely to be a particularly good surrogate.

    Or, OH OH, the giant beaver:

    There is fierce controversy over the reintroduction of normal beavers in some countries, so imagine how much fuss there would be over the reintroduction of the 2.5-metre-long giant beaver to North America. It's not too much to hope for a genome sequence of this massive rodent, says Hendrik Poinar, a geneticist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. The capybara, which is about half the mass, would probably be the most suitable surrogate, though it might still be too distant a relative.

    It's too bad Paleocaster is too old -- their spiral burrows ("devil's corkscrews") are totally cool.

    The article ends on the depressing note that the first resurrected species will likely be one that is now living -- gorillas are the example mentioned. Since the cloning of the gaur, that scenario seems pretty likely.

    Tags: 
    megafauna
    cloning
    resurrection
    biotech
Subscribe to megafauna

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.