. "12 Megafauna Biomass Tradeoff as a Driver of Quaternary and Future Extinctions--ANTHONY D. BARNOSKY." In the Light of Evolution, Volume II: Biodiversity and Extinction. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2008.
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In the Light of Evolution: Volume II—Biodiversity and Extinction
FIGURE 12.3 Estimated biomass of humans plotted against the estimated biomass of non-human megafauna. See Methods for parameters used.
tions in Eurasia and Beringia were almost exactly balanced by the gain in human biomass.
However, global megafauna biomass crashed dramatically between 15 and 11.5 kyr B.P. The crash reflects the second pulse of extinction in Eurasia–Beringia and the major extinction pulse in North and South America. This crash is evident in every one of the sensitivity tests, so it does not appear to be a computation artifact. The crash also remains evident when the biomass added by domestic species that support humans—pigs, sheep, goats, cattle—are included beginning 11 kyr B.P. Even using unreasonably high proportions of domesticates to humans (i.e., assuming today’s
FIGURE 12.4 Change in the sum of human and non-human wild megafauna biomass through time. The brackets indicate when extinction pulses hit the respective geographic areas. See Methods for parameters used.
