End of the Megafauna: The Fate of the World’s Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals

MacPhee (Race to the End), a paleomammalogist with the American Museum of Natural History, critically examines theories on the extinction of many huge vertebrate species over the past 50,000 years in this lavishly illustrated volume. These “near time extinctions,” as MacPhee terms them, wiped out sabertooth cats, gorilla-sized lemurs, half-ton lizards, and other oversized species. At the outset, MacPhee declares, “all serious positions... deserve a hearing,” and he proceeds to demonstrate this point. Rigorously examining the evidence for and against various hypotheses, he shows that the two major contenders point to either “overkill”—excessive hunting by early humans—or climate change as the causes. MacPhee lays the groundwork for his discussion with chapters on the state of the world during this period, the spread of humans and their precursors, and earlier theories regarding “near time” extinctions. To enliven the text, the book includes cartoons, maps, graphs, sidebars on such topics as “Mammoth on the Menu,” and most importantly, Peter Schouten’s marvelous color illustrations of gomphotheres, diprotodonts, mammoths, and the rest. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the subject of animal extinctions, in the present or the past. (Nov.)