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Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (Organisms and Environments), by Paul S. Martin
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As recently as 11,000 years ago—"near time" to geologists—mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age. Part paleontological adventure and part memoir, Twilight of the Mammoths presents in detail internationally renowned paleoecologist Paul Martin's widely discussed and debated "overkill" hypothesis to explain these mysterious megafauna extinctions. Taking us from Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon, where he finds himself "chest deep in sloth dung," to other important fossil sites in Arizona and Chile, Martin's engaging book, written for a wide audience, uncovers our rich evolutionary legacy and shows why he has come to believe that the earliest Americans literally hunted these animals to death.
As he discusses the discoveries that brought him to this hypothesis, Martin relates many colorful stories and gives a rich overview of the field of paleontology as well as his own fascinating career. He explores the ramifications of the overkill hypothesis for similar extinctions worldwide and examines other explanations for the extinctions, including climate change. Martin's visionary thinking about our missing megafauna offers inspiration and a challenge for today's conservation efforts as he speculates on what we might do to remedy this situation—both in our thinking about what is "natural" and in the natural world itself.
- Sales Rank: #482007 in Books
- Published on: 2005-11-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .91" h x 6.34" w x 9.28" l, 1.18 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 250 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Paleontologist Martin delivers an energetic and highly entertaining look at one of the most controversial issues in his field of geoscience: overkill, the argument that "virtually all extinctions of wild animals in the last 50,000 years are anthropogenic, that is, caused by humans" and not by climate change. As one of the leading advocates of this theory, Martin uses his own extensive research—as well as amusing insights from his personal life and career—to make his case. He draws on studies from Costa Rica and Madagascar to California and the Grand Canyon, and brings alive on the page such extinct creatures as mammoths, mastodons and the "gentle giant" ground sloths, which he shows were present in North America before the arrival of prehistoric people. He is quite fair in presenting opposing arguments and displays his ability to explain complex concepts in understandable ways. But while Martin is convincing in his reasoning and his suggestions for developing new ecological parks to increase our appreciation of the lost beasts, what is most memorable is his ability to show that "we are half blind if we behold the Grand Canyon without visions" of its extinct species. 17 b&w photos, 12 line drawings. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Once upon a time--say 13,000 years ago--armadillos the size of small cars, sloths the size of bull elephants, and lizards as large as school buses roamed the earth. Tyrannosaurus rex was toast, but other giant species of mammals, reptiles, and birds populated the planet in staggering numbers. And then Homo sapiens came along, and one by one these great beasts disappeared. Early humans hunted to excess, destroyed animal habitats, and introduced alien species and diseases into a once pristine wilderness. Sound familiar? This, in the simplest of terms, is paleontologist Martin's controversial "overkill" theory of megafauna extinction, one he has devoted the last 50 years of his life to resolving. Balancing scientific data with scintillating tales of archaeological adventures, Martin presents a sometimes cautionary tale in which he urges the celebration of these extinct marvels as a way of not only appreciating the vast biotic wealth of our planet but also as a means of inspiring today's conservation efforts. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From the Inside Flap
"Paul S. Martin's innovative ideas on late quaternary extinctions and wildlife restoration have fueled one of science's most stimulating recent debates. He expounds them vividly here, and defends them eloquently. A must-read."—David Rains Wallace, author of Beasts of Eden
"This is a marvelous read, by a giant in American prehistory, about one of the greatest mysteries in the earth sciences."—Tim Flannery, author of The Eternal Frontier
"Whether or not you agree with Paul Martin, he has shaped how we think about our Pleistocene ancestors and their role in transforming this planet."—Ross D. E. MacPhee, Curator of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History
Most helpful customer reviews
44 of 45 people found the following review helpful.
Onward with Pleistocene Park!
By Connie Barlow
"Twilight of the Mammoths" is a gem of a book that traces the career work of one of America's most distinguished ecologists: University of Arizona Emeritus, Paul Martin. Martin begins the book with a crash course in Pleistocene ecology: a who's who of magnificent megafauna, from mammoths to mylodon ground sloths - most of whom vanished suddenly some 13,000 years ago ("Near Time," according to Martin). Surely readers will be surprised by how little this awareness has penetrated even the ecologically schooled. Martin aims to correct that oversight, by bringing the dimension of time - near time and "deep time" - into ecology.
Paul Martin is best known for his "Overkill Hypothesis." The great beasts of Ice Age America went extinct, he maintains, not because of climate change but because of us - specifically, the first mammals to arrive on this continent, across the Bering Land Bridge, equipped with weapons that could kill at a distance. This scientific memoir does a splendid job of helping the reader step by step engage with that issue and to acquire a deep sense of the historical twists and turns of its reception. Along the way, we are treated to sensory rich descriptions and storytelling of events and experiences that shaped Martin's outlook. The author is not only a scientist but one of the world's great naturalists - feeling and tasting his way through the landscape. And he is an elegant and sensitive writer:
"It will come as no surprise," Martin writes, "that I define 'the last entire earth' differently than did Thoreau. Prehistorians find that any given land begins to lose its wildness not when the first Europeans arrive, but when the very first humans do. In the Americas true wilderness was more than 10,000 years gone by the time Columbus reached our shores. It disappeared with the megafauna, whose calls gave voice to the forests and prairies." (p. 183)
He continues, "A great many large animals, gifts of the evolutionary gods, were destroyed before anyone drew their images on bone or stone or on the walls of American caves."
Just before "Twilight of the Mammoths" was published, Paul Martin was among a dozen authors proposing in a commentary in the prestigious journal Nature that it is not enough to mourn the near-tiime passing of the great beasts. Rather, we must embark on a kind of "resurrection." ("Rewilding North America", Donlan et al., 18 August 2005).
Martin's final chapter, "Resurrection: The Past Is Future," brilliantly and movingly establishes the argument and begins to develop the details. But it all began thirty years ago, and with just one man as lonely advocate. "Twilight of the Mammoths" revisits the highlights of those years.
To begin: In the mid-1970s, Paul Martin publishes an outlandish proposal in Natural History Magazine: "Bring Back the Camel!" Martin is advocating a return of the camel to shrubby rangelands in the western United States - in part because overgrazing of grasses by horses and cattle would be ameliorated by the browsing prowess of camels (which prefer noxious shrubs to silica-rich grasses). But he is also urging the introduction of camels as a kind of "repatriation" of a type of animal that not only used to live on this continent but whose family originated right here.
Paul Martin was, thus, bringing an evolutionary understanding to range management and conservation biology. His proposal to bring back the camel was met by a resounding silence. As decades passed, Martin kept at it: arguing (to no avail) for officials at the Grand Canyon to look upon feral burros not as troublesome aliens but as suitable proxies for the native members of the horse family that lived throughout the western United States until going extinct just 13,000 years ago.
Meanwhile, this Pleistocene ecologist was authoring and co-authoring all sorts of technical (but, nevertheless, always engagingly written) scientific papers supporting the theory for which he is best known: Overkill.
Finally, in the late 1990s, Martin published an idea that made his camel and burro advocacy look tame: "Bring Back the Elephants!" he declared in Wild Earth Journal. Well, this time, somebody was listening - several somebodies, important somebodies in the realm of conservation biology (e.g., Michael Soule) and in environmental activism (Dave Foreman). The commentary they co-published in Nature is bringing an exciting and monumental expansion in the scope of conservation biology. "Twilight of the Mammoths" is the historical foundation.
"It could be argued," writes Martin, "that taxa have an inherent moral right to continue evolving free of human intervention, or even that Earth as a whole has a right to demonstrate its fullest possible evolutionary potential. It could be argued that, as the species responsible for the extinction of so many taxa, humans have a corresponding responsibility to attempt their restoration when feasible. Like all sweeping philosophical and ethical arguments, these are open to intense debate." (p. 202)
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Informative and Entertaining!
By Matthew Champlin
Great book detailing the "Overkill" theory that has been championed by Martin for years now. Hopefully he is seeing some justification for his work as now most computer models detailing human migration and breeding patterns do indeed show that the first migrants to a new continent could indeed wipe out an entire genre of species.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Not light reading
By Alan Kerbaugh
Well written and interesting, but not light reading for the average reader without a background in anthropology. Still, you will probably learn a lot, if you skip over the latin.
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