Pages: 335-342
This article continues the previous discussion (Буровский, Пучков 2013; Питулько 2013). It shows that the objections raised by V. V. Pitulko (2013) against humans as a prime cause of Pleistocene megafauna extinction are rather biased and untenable. Contrary to his view, there were no rigorous agreement in spatio-temporal ranges of wooly mammoths and “true xerophilous” insect species: there were no such insects at all in considerable parts of mammoth range. Therefore, climate changes that caused contraction of the areas of these insects have nothing to do with the extinction of the mammoth. Mammoths lived not only in dry tundra-steppes but in many other landscapes as well. The human settlement of Siberia was a long-term multiple stage and oscillating process. Hence, hunting pressure of humans grew up gradually, and even mammoths of North Siberia were not a naïve prey quite early in the Wurm. This is why the overkill of mammoths here (as well as in Northern Eurasia as a whole) proceeded in the way of slow “sitzkrieg” and not in the rapid “blitzkrieg” way. A temporal gap between the “last” mammoths and the “first” humans on Taimyr and Wrangel island are imagenary due to incompleteness of the geological record. Inability of climate-driven “natural causes” to drive Pleistocene megafauna to extinctions without replacement is evidenced by the absence/rarity of such extinctions during numerous pre-Wurm climatic oscillations.
Keywords: Pleistocene megafauna extinctions, landscape transformation, insects-xerophiles, mammoth, hunting, overkill, “sitzkrieg”
Information about authors:
Pavel Putshkov (Kiev, Ukraine). Candidate of Biological Sciences. I. I. Schmalhausen Zoology Institute of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Bogdan Khmelnitsky St., 15, Kiev, 01601, Ukraine
E-mail: [email protected]
Andrey Burovsky (Saint Petersburg, Russia). Doctor of Philosophical Sciences. Federal State Unitar Organisation “Geological Expertise”. Bolshaya Gruzinskaya St., 2, Moscow, 123242, Russia
E-mail: [email protected]