Welcome to The Extinctions!
Welcome ladies & gentlemen to the very first blog-post on The Extinctions! Theatrics aside, this is a very exciting event for me and my project-partner, Søren. The idea of The Extinctions has been one we’ve bounced back-and-forth for more than a year, and over the last two months we’ve been working hard on actually realising it. If you are new here - as everyone, including the author, is - you might well have a few questions about the website, what our goal is, and what sort of content to expect. A general overview of our aims can be found on our about page, while here I will be more concrete.
Our goal
In many ways, this website exists as a response to a problem we have noticed: The available literature on the Quaternary extinctions is woefully inadequate in comparison to the interest in, and importance of, the subject. Scientific papers are numerous, to the extent that forming an overview of current consensus can be almost impossible. Indeed, so unwieldy is the subject that many high-profile papers have built conclusions upon glaring omissions of evidence, seemingly because the authors simply were not aware of the relevant studies.
On the enthusiast’s level, this can make studying the Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions a tiring and confusing task. We hope to reach both the academic and the armchair palaeontologist, providing ample links and citations for those who can access and understand them, whilst providing concise and captivating articles for those who are simply interested. As we go on, we will collect all of the relevant sources we have cited in our articles on a single page, our sources page, which we hope will eventually become a go-to index for those wishing to gain an overview of the literature.
Our plans
At present, there are on the website two articles. The first, on the European extinctions, is part one of what will likely be three articles. The present article provides a general introduction to the lost megafauna (large animals) of Europe, as well as a survey of the available climatic evidence. The second part will cover evidence for human hunting, possible insights from modern hunter-gatherers, and a discussion of what sort of archaeological evidence we reasonably ought to expect. The third part will follow the extinctions into the Holocene period, investigating to what degree the historical extinctions and declines of species such as the aurochs and bison can really be separated from the loss of mammoths, lions and other ice-age animals.
Our second article, on New Caledonia, is a concise survey of that island’s prehistoric fauna, the available evidence (and lack thereof), and the probable cause of extinctions. It is the first instalment of our island-features, which will be a string of articles exploring the lost faunas of various isles and archipelagos across the world. The cause of the extinctions on these islands is rarely contested (as will be seen), but proper summaries of the extinct species can be very difficult to find online. Through our island-features, we hope to make this information much more easily available than it currently is.
Going forward, we have another article already in the pipeline, which will probably drop in a week or two. It is our ambition to release at least 1-2 articles a month, occasionally bolstered by guest-authors sharing their own projects and expertises. This blog is essentially the place for any article that doesn’t have citations. It will be the place for updates, reflections, and perhaps in time opinions.
I hope you find our research as fascinating as we have!
- Tristan Søbye Rapp