Megafauna went extinct almost systematically during the latter part of the Pleistocene Epoch, the period of Earth’s history from 2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago (Johnson, 2018). These large mammals, or megafauna, are defined with respect to their taxonomic group, and typically denote species that weigh over 1000 kg (Lupe & Schmitt, 2016). The plains of prehistoric North America were once habitat to the largest mammals to ever walk the planet. Quaternary period, megafauna, extinction, Paleoindians, optimal foraging This research carries serious implications regarding the dangers of climate change as well as human overexploitation of natural resources as risk factors for biodiversity loss and should be considered in conversations surrounding modern day conservation efforts. Total energy expended exceeded the proposed net caloric return rate for consumption of a mammoth, suggesting that a variety of factors, and not human hunting alone, ultimately caused the Quaternary extinction event. Considering optimal foraging theory the overkill hypothesis is improbable. This piece further explores this hypothesis through an economic lens, considering the advantages and disadvantages to hunting large game with regards to tradeoffs in energy expenditure. Two primary, yet conflicting, hypotheses aim to explain the cause of this biodiversity loss, leading many scholars to ask: was climate change or human overhunting responsible for the demise of North American megafauna? Support for the latter theory, or the overkill hypothesis, comes from archaeological evidence suggesting that the arrival of the first humans in the Americas, the Paleoindians, and the first megafaunal extinctions occurred roughly in tandem. The Quaternary Period is infamous for overseeing the extinction of some of prehistory’s most charismatic species, including the wooly mammoth and American mastodon.
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