superonva caused extinction of Mammoths. very scary tale

[spacefire]

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=17893<br /><br />what are the chances of something like that happening?<br />this reminds me of that thread we had not long ago in free space about something hitting Earth at nearly the speed of light. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>http://asteroid-invasion.blogspot.com</p><p>http://www.solvengineer.com/asteroid-invasion.html </p><p> </p> </div>

 

[silylene old]

that article is nothing but speculation, which is quite unlikely to have happened.<br /><br />Mammoths were almost certainly hunted to death by stone-age hunters. They didn't all die on the same day either, but over a multi-thousand year span. In fact, a dwarf variety of mammoths survived into historical times on isolated Wrangel Island.<br /><br />And why didn't other species die also? Polar bears - alive. Penguins - alive. Elk - alive. Moose - alive. African elephants - alive. Indian elephants - alive. etc, etc. <br /><br />This explanation of supernova just doesn't fit the experimental extinction observations. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[silylene old]

<font color="yellow">And it might have been that the climate changes associated with the end of the Ice Age had something to do with the mammoth extinction as well. One tends to favor more than one cause as being more effective, than a single cause. </font><br /><br />This would possibly be true if there had been only one ice age. But mammoths had lived through a score of ice ages and warm periods over the 3M years prior to their extinction. They simply followed the cold climate bands north and south as the glaciers ebbed and thawed as the ice ages came and went.<br /><br />Several species of mammoth that went extinct over a time frame of a few thousand years. It is unlikely that the cold climates killed off two of these species.<br /><br />Columbian mammoths were relatively hairless and adapted to live in the warm Los Angeles basin area (it was a rather warm climate even during the ice age). They went extinct at the same time as woolly mammoths.<br /><br />Imperial mammoths lived in the wet coastal regions, again another not-so-cold climate. They too went extinct.<br /><br /><br />The mammoth extinction was coincident with the movement of new tribes of Cro Magnon hunters into Siberia and the Americas, who hunted with effective new spear, bow and pit trap technologies. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[alokmohan]

All that I add is that there are too many theories of extinction and every day new theoris come up.