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Title: The Call of Distant Mammoths: Why the Ice Age Mammals Disappeared by Peter Douglas Ward ISBN: 0-387-98572-7 Publisher: Copernicus Books Pub. Date: October, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (8 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Zero Stars
Comment:
It remains mysterious that humans are held to be the cause of any kind of phenomenon that is otherwise unexplainable within a uniformitarian framework. The mammoths went extinct precisely where they'd have had no food supply to build their population to such high levels, nor indeed to support so much as a herd.
In other words, they didn't go extinct because of conditions that exist today, but they did go extinct due to natural conditions. And not due to fictional bands of ravenous human hunters.
This book should appeal to the knee-jerk reactionaries who sanctimoniously hand down judgments about the lifestyles of the rest of us. This book is worth less than fossilized mammoth dung.
Rating: 5
Summary: Ward nailed it!
Comment: Some truths are self-evident. That human beings are likely responsible for the mass extinctions of the Pleistocene megafauna is one of these truths. That we are still in the process of exterminating the remnants of the Pleistocene megafauna is another of these truths.
Mr. Ward, in addition to being a fine scholar, is also a very talented writer who adds a generous touch of humanity to what could have been a very dry and intellectual read. I highly recommend this book. It's eye-opening, sometimes frightening, but largely on target. All in all, it's the best book on the disappearance of our era's megafauna since Leakey's THE FIFTH EXTINCTION, and the two books will share shelf space in my office.
Rating: 5
Summary: The real elephant graveyards......
Comment: The extinction of ice age mammals and other megafauna is not just a periphereral topic. It is important because, as Mr Ward duly points out, in a sense WE are Ice age megafauna. The mammoths and mastodons and their extinctions are particularly interesting, not just from their romantic appeal, but because they are indeed representative of much that we can learn about what happened to other megafauna at the same time, and indeed about ourselves. A selection of both the probiscideans (elephant line) and hominids wandered out of Africa during the last few million years. Both hominids and the various probiscideans are large and adaptable to varying environmental conditions, including ice ages. Both seem wanderers by nature. Both are intelligent and social animals. Both have few natural predators. Both were very successful during climatic change, including the Ice Ages. Emphasis on WERE. What happened to the mammoths, and other megafauna? This book seeks to answer such a question- the causes, and moreover, the lessons we can learn from this about our own selves.
Their extinction is not simple. Overhunting by humans is considered the most likely and significant cause, although there may well have been other contributing factors. Mr Ward contends that the end of the last ice age(s) created stress for mammoths and some other megafaunal species, which humans were then able to push over the edge through overhunting. It is true to say that without humans, they never would have gone extinct, as they survived many other climatic changes. However, the stress that was created by these climatic changes reduced their natural 'immunity' to such predators as humans in the first place, making it easier for humans to drive them to extinction. Basically, we kick other species when they are down.
There are interesting discussions on wave front (killings), species threshhold and the like, stress, environmental change, elephant-and by correlation-suspected aspects of mammoth behaviour and nature, including gestation, rate of birth, mortality and its causes, and so on. Studies on modern elephants help us gain insight into what the mammoths might have been like, and so this book is also a good read for those who are interested in elephants in general. Some snippets include how elephants increase birth rates under stress, neglect their young in times of drought, the problems of poaching, their eating habits, and why they survived in Africa (they are already extinct in the wild in India).
The basic thrust of the book concerns the debate between overhunting and the Clovis hunters which are suspected to account for their demise, and environmental causes. There are also some discussions on the extinction of other Ice age megafauna such as the diprotodon of Australia-a very large extinct elephant-like marsupial herbivore (there is a skeleton in the Coonabarabran Information Centre in NSW, Australia, recently found, which I have seen, with what looks like a spear point in its ribs), and others. There are overviews from various studies on Quaternary extinctions in general, throughout the world, although Mr Ward focuses primarily on mammoths.
It is a very readable and entertaining book, neither long-winded nor self-congratulatory. However one criticism is that perhaps Mr Ward could have discussed other megafauna in more detail, especially in places like Madagascar, New Zealand and Australia. He does mention these places and their extinct megafauna, but only really in passing. (There isn't much on Australia Mr Ward!). But of course the book is about *mammoths*, I suppose.
The book is quite readable, entertaining, and anything but dry. And I also think it gets better as it goes along, towards the end he introduces some interesting possible twists to the tale of mammoth extinction, and about ourselves, but you will have to read them yourself. Suffice to say those ice ages we have come through may have had more influence on human prehistory than we have formerly given credit.
It really is an excellent book which thoroughly deserves more circulation, full of rare insights and romance. For science enthusiasts, animal and murder mystery lovers, put it on your shelf. I doubt you will regret it.
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Title: After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America by E. C. Pielou ISBN: 0226668126 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: September, 1992 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: On Methuselah's Trail: Living Fossils and the Great Extinctions by Peter Douglas Ward, Steven M. Stanley ISBN: 071672488X Publisher: W H Freeman & Co. Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Before the Indians by Björn Kurtén ISBN: 0231065833 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: Ice Age Mammals of North America by Ian Lange, illustrator Dorothy S. Norton ISBN: 0878424032 Publisher: Mountain Press Publishing Company Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives by Mauricio Antón, Alan Turner, F. Clark Howell ISBN: 0231102291 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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