Before humans migrated out of Afro-Asia about 45,000 years ago, Australia was home to a variety of organisms that had evolved in isolation for millions of years.
-
-
Show this thread
-
Among these creatures were 450-pound, six-foot kangaroos, a marsupial lion as large as a modern tiger, flightless birds twice the size of ostriches, the giant diprotodon - a two-and-a-half-ton wombat - as well as lizards, snakes, and giant koalas.
Show this thread -
Save for the birds and reptiles, these animals were marsupials - meaning that, like kangaroos, they gave birth to tiny, helpless offspring, which they nurtured with milk in abdominal pouches.
Show this thread -
Within a few thousand years of Humans' arrival in Australia, twenty-three of the twenty-four animal species weighing 100 pounds or more became extinct, as did a large number of smaller species. The entire food chain throughout the Australian ecosystem was broken and rearranged.
Show this thread -
As if that weren't remarkable enough, the Homo Sapien migration to America - which took place around 16,000 years ago - resulted in an even bigger ecological disaster.
Show this thread -
Upon arriving in North America, humans "encountered mammoths and mastodons, rodents the size of bears, herds of horses and camels, oversized lions and dozens of large species the likes of which are completely unknown today, among them fearsome sabre-tooth cats and giant sloths."
Show this thread -
"South America had an even more exotic menagerie of large mammals, reptiles, and birds. The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation. . . ."
Show this thread -
Within 2,000 years of humans setting foot, most of these species were gone. In North America, thirty-four our of forty-seven genera of large mammals disappeared. In South America, fifty out of sixty. So did thousands of species of smaller mammals, reptiles, birds, and insects.
Show this thread -
Note that this was all millennia before the Agricultural Revolution, after which events like this repeated themselves many times. Fucking humans, man. Always fucking shit up.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
The dominant form of life in earth is bacterial and it has been for 3.5 billion years when life began. And bacteria have only been helped by us. Fungi probably come second and likewise are thriving. Plant extinctions are more worrisome. Animals are an afterthought.
-
Fair point. Bacteria are also absolutely essential to our own survival.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.