Fifty millennia of catastrophic extinctions after human contact

Debate continues to rage between enthusiasts for climate change versus humans as a cause of the catastrophic faunal extinctions that have occurred in the wake of human arrival in previously uninhabited regions of the world. A global pattern of human arrival to such landmasses, followed by faunal collapse and other ecological changes, appears without known exception. This strongly suggests to some investigators that a more interesting extinction debate lies within the realm of potential human-caused explanations and how climate might exacerbate human impacts. New observations emerging from refined dating techniques, paleoecology and modeling suggest that the mega-faunal collapses of the Americas and Australia, as well as most prehistoric island biotic losses, trace to a variety of human impacts, including rapid overharvesting, biological invasions, habitat transformation and disease.