I just want to add that “megafauna” are not some long forgotten group of beasts that lived one JILLION years ago.
Megafauna still exist. In addition to blue whales, there are also less obvious examples like the moose.
Megafauna were common as recently as ~15,000 years ago, but saw a sudden decline due to a warming climate and human predation.
Your ancestors coexisted with megafauna and did not consider them separate from other animals (as far as we know). Many (not all) of the extinct megafauna are literally just bigger versions of things we have now. On the flip side, many of the animals we have now are the smaller version of the animals they coexisted with.
For example: beavers. Prior to the arrival of humans in the Americas, there was a giant species of beaver that was able to construct much larger dams than the beavers that we have left. The beavers we have now are like “miniature” versions of those beavers.
The small beavers almost went extinct, too. No different than their larger cousins.
admiralturtleship t1_j9h2itn wrote
Reply to TIL - That avocado seeds are so large because they depended on extinct megafauna to eat and disperse them. by byronhadleigh
I just want to add that “megafauna” are not some long forgotten group of beasts that lived one JILLION years ago.
Megafauna still exist. In addition to blue whales, there are also less obvious examples like the moose.
Megafauna were common as recently as ~15,000 years ago, but saw a sudden decline due to a warming climate and human predation.
Your ancestors coexisted with megafauna and did not consider them separate from other animals (as far as we know). Many (not all) of the extinct megafauna are literally just bigger versions of things we have now. On the flip side, many of the animals we have now are the smaller version of the animals they coexisted with.
For example: beavers. Prior to the arrival of humans in the Americas, there was a giant species of beaver that was able to construct much larger dams than the beavers that we have left. The beavers we have now are like “miniature” versions of those beavers.
The small beavers almost went extinct, too. No different than their larger cousins.