Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America Volume 8

by Paul S. Martin

Book Overview

As recently as 11,000 years ago--"near time" to geologists--mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age. Part paleontological adventure and part memoir, Twilight...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520252438
• ISBN13: 9780520252431
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Good deal and book arrived on time

Good deal and book arrived on time

Great for Understanding Ice Age Mega Fauna Extinctions

This book is an excellent, reasoned discourse on the evidence chain and the theories behind why large mammals in North America went extinct all at the same time - about 12,500 years ago. Before I read this book I had heard of the popular theories of why the north american megafauna went extinct, but had not heard which theory was most likely. Martin makes clear that the overkill theory has the greatest logical and evidentiary support. it's important in science to keep an open mind about causes. Recently, more work has been done on an ash layer in the geologic record that suggests a great fire or possible comet explosion that may have occurred around the time of the megafauna extinctions in north america. I can believe that such an event had a contributing impact. After reading this book though, there is no question in my mind that n. american megafauna would have survived even a great fire or comet blast so long as they were not also subject to human induced causes. The other great theories for ice age mammal extinction are referred to as 'overill', for disease-related explanations, and 'overchill', for cold climate explanations. Martin skillfully and convincingly refutes these theories for their unsound logic and lack of evidence. It is clear to me now that the reason for this debate between overkill, overill, and overchill persists only because the evidentiary chain is not clearly in favor enough of any one of the 3. But the preponderance of evidence, and the soundest reasoning, favors overkill by at least a 10-1 compared to overill or overchill. I would expect future archaeological and paleontological discoveries to add to the evidence supporting overkill. One final note: I am now a huge supporter of the Pleistocene park concept, and am hopeful that humans are able to rescue the remaining African and Asian megafauna from extinction with park reserves in Siberia and the Americas. I can envision now a park in Texas with asian elephants replacing mammoths, African or Asian lions once again bringing the lost American lion back to life, camels returning to their evolutionary American origins, wild horse herds, introduced threatened African or Asian ungulate species to stand in for their recently extinct American cousins, cheetahs returning, and even threatened tigers getting a second life as the replacement for now-extinct scimitar and saber tooth cats. I leave it to a zoologist to figure out how to replace a giant ground sloth, or even a Shasta ground sloth. Other pleistocene park possibilities exist in other parts of the world. South america could easily see a return of elephants. The remaining ancestor of the short faced bear, which is the South American spectacled bear, is itself threatened and could use a reserve somewhere else in the world. Enjoy this book!

Thought-provoking arguments and speculation

This is one of those books that may jolt the conventional wisdom implanted in your brain, especially if you are an environmentalist. First the negative...I thought the first 5 chapters, about one-half, of this book to be a bit boring, telling me more about sloth dung than I really wanted to know. But then the book picked up -- way up -- in interest. The true "natural" environment of the United States, in Martin's view, existed 13,000 years ago before man got here and that it has been out of balance since. Martin comes down strong on the side that human beings were responsible for the extinction of many large mammals in the Americas about 13,000 years ago and his argument is persuasive. He also makes a strong case that human beings have lived in the Americas for little more than 13,000 years. This is a hot-button issue among archaeologists, but Martin's point is: if the Indians were here more than 13,000 years ago where are the signs of their presence? Not many, if any, have been found in a hundred years of looking. His most interesting point and new to me was his proposals to re-people (wrong word, maybe "re-animate"?) the New World with representatives of the large mammals that became extinct. For example, why is that our government is trying to kill off the burros and wild horses in national parks? Horses originated in the Americas; they became extinct about 13,000 years ago. Why not allow them to reestablish themselves as a native species? And then he really gets off on a speculative tangent, "rewilding America." Camels and Llamas lived in the United States until 13,000 thousand years ago; why not reintroduce them as native, wild species. Similarly rhinocerous, elephant, lion, tiger and other mammal species. To be sure the species of the mammals that became extinct are not exactly the same species that now live -- but close enough, in his opinion. An Asian elephant, he says, is closer genetically to extinct mammoths than it is to the African elephant. Smallchief

A home run

Unlike some recent shots at global warming and human history by Flannery and Diamond, Martin doesn't have to boil his Overkill model down to layperson-ready nuggets and force you to swallow them on every page. While those texts were certainly brilliant, Martin knocks the wind out of you with a more up-tempo pace and a far more exciting mystery to solve. While certainly readable for non-scientists, Martin doesn't wait for you to catch up. But no matter, with the seeds of ancient 5-ton sloths and wombats as big as Volkswagens planted in your head, Martin has you by the tusk on page one. By the end, he's demolished overkill's opponents, and has you singing the songs of North American elephants--the centerpiece of the bold, impossible dream called the Rewilding of America.

Onward with Pleistocene Park!

"Twilight of the Mammoths" is a gem of a book that traces the career work of one of America's most distinguished ecologists: University of Arizona Emeritus, Paul Martin. Martin begins the book with a crash course in Pleistocene ecology: a who's who of magnificent megafauna, from mammoths to mylodon ground sloths - most of whom vanished suddenly some 13,000 years ago ("Near Time," according to Martin). Surely readers will be surprised by how little this awareness has penetrated even the ecologically schooled. Martin aims to correct that oversight, by bringing the dimension of time - near time and "deep time" - into ecology. Paul Martin is best known for his "Overkill Hypothesis." The great beasts of Ice Age America went extinct, he maintains, not because of climate change but because of us - specifically, the first mammals to arrive on this continent, across the Bering Land Bridge, equipped with weapons that could kill at a distance. This scientific memoir does a splendid job of helping the reader step by step engage with that issue and to acquire a deep sense of the historical twists and turns of its reception. Along the way, we are treated to sensory rich descriptions and storytelling of events and experiences that shaped Martin's outlook. The author is not only a scientist but one of the world's great naturalists - feeling and tasting his way through the landscape. And he is an elegant and sensitive writer: "It will come as no surprise," Martin writes, "that I define 'the last entire earth' differently than did Thoreau. Prehistorians find that any given land begins to lose its wildness not when the first Europeans arrive, but when the very first humans do. In the Americas true wilderness was more than 10,000 years gone by the time Columbus reached our shores. It disappeared with the megafauna, whose calls gave voice to the forests and prairies." (p. 183) He continues, "A great many large animals, gifts of the evolutionary gods, were destroyed before anyone drew their images on bone or stone or on the walls of American caves." Just before "Twilight of the Mammoths" was published, Paul Martin was among a dozen authors proposing in a commentary in the prestigious journal Nature that it is not enough to mourn the near-tiime passing of the great beasts. Rather, we must embark on a kind of "resurrection." ("Rewilding North America", Donlan et al., 18 August 2005). Martin's final chapter, "Resurrection: The Past Is Future," brilliantly and movingly establishes the argument and begins to develop the details. But it all began thirty years ago, and with just one man as lonely advocate. "Twilight of the Mammoths" revisits the highlights of those years. To begin: In the mid-1970s, Paul Martin publishes an outlandish proposal in Natural History Magazine: "Bring Back the Camel!" Martin is advocating a return of the camel to shrubby rangelands in the western United States - in part because overgrazing of grasses by horses and cattle would

Provocative Read

As a student of the Quaternary, I was excited about this book from the acknowledged near time expert, Dr. Paul S. Martin. I was not disappointed. Dr. Martin does a great job of building a pyramid of background information so any new student to Ice Age Extinctions will have a firm foundation. He even parenthesizes definitions behind terminology that might be new to the lay reader. For those new to Dr. Martin's angle on Ice Age Extinctions, he attributes all of the near-time megafaunal extinctions to pre-historic hunting. He dismisses climatologists' assertions that changing weather patterns contributed or were solely responsible for the end of so many large terrestrial animals in North America. Following his logic, Dr. Martin proposes a "rewilding" of America with not only wolves and horses, but with similar species of those animals no longer in existence, such as elephants and African antelope. Whether you agree with his assertions, assumptions or conclusions, you will find this book provocative and full of good science.