Warming Lethal For Extinct Megafauna

by Stephen Luntz
Photo credit: Mammoths may have had more to fear from warm climates than humans. Credit: AuntSpray/Shutterstock.

The great hairy beasts of the Pleistocene disappeared during sharp warming spikes, a new study in Science reports. The timing of these extinctions may absolve humans of responsibility, but one of the paper's authors says that our activities may still have been a contributing factor.

The history of life on Earth is one of extinctions and new arrivals, but the last 50,000 years have seen a great loss of land-based megafauna, defined as animals weighing more than 45 kilograms (100 pounds), everywhere outside of Africa, without replacement.

One theory, popularized by Jared Diamond, is that our technology made humans lethal to anything large, tasty-looking and unsuited to being tamed. Consequently, when we arrived in new locations we proceeded to wipe out many of the large herbivores, and carnivores subsequently starved to death. African animals, however, had a chance to get used to us as we were evolving, and produced defenses of their own. An alternative view blames changes in climate.

The disappearances of Australia's three-ton wombats and demon ducks of doom have produced famously hostile camps, although many paleontologists think that both contributed. Now some of the most prominent scientists in this debate have turned their attention to the disappearance of Eurasia's mammoths, giant bears and woolly rhinoceroses, and placed the blame on dramatic bursts of warming known as Dansgaard-Oeschger events.

“The Ice Age wasn't one continuous cold era,” coauthor Professor Chris Turney, of the University of New South Wales, told IFLScience. Turney acknowledges that Dansgaard-Oeschger events' causes are unknown, but says the matching between the temperature upswings and disappearance of large species is striking.

Dating extinction is hard, Turney admits. This is not just because “There is always a question of whether you have the last specimen that ever lived,” but because the radioactive carbon that paleontologists use to date bones is better at ordering events than at matching them to exact dates. Dansgaard-Oeschger events, on the other hand, can be dated precisely from the record of annual Greenland snowfalls.

Turney and his colleagues used sediment cores from Venezuela's Cariaco Basin to bring the two timelines together. These cores, they claim, “capture a climate record via shifts in the trade winds associated with northward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone in the tropical Atlantic, alongside a comprehensive suite of radiocarbon ages from planktonic foraminifera in the sediment core.”

This produced a remarkable match between warming events and extinctions, but surviving species appear to have shrugged off subsequent bouts of cooling. Turney says that this may be because temperatures went up by the elevator and down by the stairs, taking much longer to come back down than they did to rise. However, he also says that the greater vulnerability to warming should arouse concerns today.

Turney agrees that humans may have proven a problem for species trying to migrate to escape climatic changes, but thinks that the warming influence was dominant. In this context the more stable tropical temperatures over much of Africa may have had more to do with megafauna survival than familiarity with humans.

Happy 4th of July

Yesterday Arthur pass and his skirts swish over us and...Bum... thunders and lights, heavy rain and dark pregnant clouds.... from all our neighborhood only 3 building left without electricity...one is our...we took a look at Pepco outage map....

		>2,500 Customers Out
		1,001-2,500 Customers Out
		251-1,000 Customers Out
		51-250 Customers Out
		1-50 Customers Out
		Multiple Outages
		Service Area Boundary

so we are completely not first priority for Pepco... which mean weekend without electricity which mean candle lights 4th of July .

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Today no clouds anymore but windy and cool ... and I am in Starbucks to recharge my phone and computer and really really hop that till I return home the electricity will be back ..

 Happy 4th of July Guys wherever you are hopping that you have all the comforts of the 21st century.

 Also delicious BBQ to you
   

It's Really &$%#ing Cold Outside. Bet You Didn't Know All These Things Could Freeze.

The Huffington Post  |  By Sara Boboltz  

Holy windchill, Batman. You don't need us to tell you that it's cold out there -- gusts of wind down to 50 below will do that just fine. Temperatures are breaking records on the lowest end of the thermometer all across the Southern and Eastern parts of the country today, and things probably won't warm up until later this week.
But extreme cold like this has also taught us a few things -- boiling water, for example, turns to snow when it meets -41.8 Fahrenheit Ontario air. It got us thinking about what happens when other everyday things meet Siberian temperatures, so we decided to investigate.
Not all of these photos are from this year (this week is, after all, not the first time it's been miserably cold!) but they're all a reminder that it can get pretty frigid during winter.

Just when you thought the indoors would protect you...

*Shiver*

Instagram: jzdph

Seriously, not even your toilet is safe from extreme cold.

Let alone the train to work.

Bubbles don't seem to like it very much.

Nor do bananas.

But apparently nature can freeze you a second window for your car.

And in the South, water fountains turn to cool new sculptures!

(We're not entirely sure why this happened.)

And firefighting seems to be way more efficient this time of year.

This squirrel probably regrets a few of its life decisions.

Same with this deer.


And it doesn't look like winter is especially kind to cars.


(Remember, if it's stuck, don't just keep pulling.)


Or your electronics.


Or your beer.

Or anything, really.

Even flowers in Texas can freeze.

And vodka! (Most of it, anyway.)

Subway stations in Chicago Chiberia have some new decorations up this week.

Instagram: onesixtieth

And regular bottles of water are almost instantly turning to ice.

(YouTube)

If you're bored, though, try that boiling water trick.

Instagram: nicholemoeller

We've got to have fun out there somehow.

Family spots missing man in cold weather news photo

Jacquelyn Martin / AP

Nicholas Simmons, 20, of Greece, N.Y., warms himself on a steam grate with three homeless men by the Federal Trade Commission, just blocks from the Capitol, during frigid temperatures in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014.

By Daniel Arkin, NBC News

A man missing since Wednesday was found by his family after this photo appeared in the pages of USA TODAY.

Nicholas A. Simmons, 20, disappeared from his family's house in a tiny upstate New York town on New Year's Day. Three days later, a photographer with the Associated Press documenting the bitter cold in Washington, D.C., took Nicholas' photo as he warmed himself on a steam grate just a stone's throw from the U.S. Capitol.

Paul and Michelle Simmons — Nicholas' parents — saw the photograph of their missing son in the Sunday edition of USA Today. After authorities intervened, the parents reunited with Nicholas in Washington later that day.

The photo, taken Saturday by AP photographer Jacquelyn Martin, showed Simmons with his unshaven face pressed against a grate outside the Federal Trade Commission. He wore a ski jacket and a hood over his head. A thick gray blanket covered his lower body.

Martin was assigned to the White House that weekend, but with President Barack Obama still on vacation in Hawaii, she spent the day looking for shots that would illustrate the cold weather. That is how she found Nick Simmons, in an area where homeless people often gather when it is frigid outside. She found a cluster of men huddled around the grate, introduced herself and started taking pictures.

Then she noticed one person in particular, huddled under a blanket.

"It struck me how young he was," Martin said. "I again introduced myself and shook his hand. He said his name was Nick."

Martin finished shooting, sent the pictures to the wire and called it a day. The next day, she received a message via Twitter from USA Today.

The newspaper had run the photo of Nick and was contacting Martin to tell her that Nick's family had recognized him and was trying to locate him. Michelle Simmons was certain that the young man in the photograph was her son, missing for four days.

Police picked Simmons up Sunday afternoon and took him to a hospital, said police Capt. Patrick Phelan. Simmons' father, Paul, and older brother Paul Jr. arrived in Washington Sunday night and were reunited with Simmons at the hospital, said longtime family friends Peter and Cindy Gugino.

Martin, the AP photographer, said the episode serves as a reminder to journalists that every person they encounter has a story to tell.

"It's really gratifying to see that a photograph can make a tangible difference in someone's life. That's a really amazing thing to have happened," she said. "I'm happy and touched that the photograph could help reunite this family."

Police said authorities notified local media and tried to investigate the case, but there were no leads until the publication of the photo.

"It was pure dumb luck how all this happened," said Sgt. David Mancuso, the lead investigator. "It's truly a miracle."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.