Pleistocene megafauna

Pleistocene megafauna were large-bodied animals living during the Pleistocene, roughly 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. Many lineages disappeared near the epoch’s end.

Woolly mammoth: An Ice Age elephant adapted to cold environments across northern Eurasia and North America. Its fossils and human associations make it one of the best-known examples.
Quaternary extinction event: A wave of large-animal extinctions across several continents during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. It names the disappearance pattern that affected many megafaunal species.
Pleistocene: The geological epoch from about 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, marked by repeated glacial cycles. Megafauna are defined in part by their occurrence during this epoch.
Trophic cascade: An ecological chain reaction in which changes to one trophic level affect others. Removing large herbivores and predators could reorganize food webs.
Late Quaternary extinctions: The geographically uneven losses of large animals during the late Quaternary. Regional differences complicate any single explanation for megafaunal disappearance.
Smilodon: An extinct genus of large saber-toothed cats that lived in the Americas. This predator shows that megafauna included formidable carnivores, not only herbivores.
Overkill hypothesis: The hypothesis that human hunting caused or substantially accelerated late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions. It explains extinctions through direct pressure from expanding human populations.
Fossil: Preserved remains, traces, or other evidence of organisms from the past. Fossils provide the direct evidence for megafaunal anatomy and distribution.
Ecological release: An increase in a species’ abundance or range after constraints such as competition or predation diminish. Surviving animals could expand into ecological roles left vacant by extinct megafauna.
Megafaunal extinction chronology: The timing of large-animal disappearances reconstructed from fossils and archaeological evidence. Dating uncertainty affects whether human arrival or climate shifts preceded local losses.

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