[ExI] Death follows European contact (Mirco Romanato)

[John Clark]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 6:37 AM, Andrew Mckee <andymck35 at gmail.com> wrote:

 >> Another myth is that the native Americans lived in ecological harmony
>> with the land, but just a few thousand years ago the megafauna in the
>> Americas was more spectacular than even what could be found in Africa, but
>> it all vanished almost immediately when humans moved in for the first time.
>> The native Australians and New Zealanders did the same thing with their
>> megafauna.
>>
>
> >Bzzzttt!, there was never any mega-fauna on the New Zealand islands to
> begin with,
>

I was thinking of the 9 species of New Zealand Moa, a bird that dwarfed the
largest living bird the ostrich; it stood 12 feet tall and weighed well
over 500 pounds.  I was also thinking of the Haast Eagle, the largest eagle
that ever lived; it had a 10 foot wingspread and weighed between 33 and 36
pounds. It went extinct in 1400, about a century after the Maori people
first settled in New Zealand when their principle food supply, young Moas,
were hunted to extinction.

> it's geologically too young to have developed any.

It doesn't take long for new species to develop, the Galapagos Islands are
made of some of the youngest land on this planet and yet they contain
animals found nowhere else.

> But you're being dis-ingenious to begin with surely?
>

Why bother to ask me that? If you think I'm a liar you won't believe me
when I say I'm not a liar.

> Since I'd always thought that the age of warm, wet and sky high co2
> levels that enabled megafauna was well and truly over long before any
> humans walked the earth, no?


 No.

  John K Clark
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