#humans are megafauna

[approximateknowledge]

once you learn enough about evolutionary biology you start seeing ghosts everywhere

#everything alive carries within it the traces of its ancestors' niches #and also some niches are just eerily *empty* where they were once full #and im not talking like “the megafauna here got eradicated by human intervention and hunting and habitat loss” #i mean it in the “there hasn't been a proper aerial macropredator since the azadrchids went extinct 65 million years ago”-sense #which is something you cannot unthink or unsee #especially in island ecosystems

[plaguedocboi]

Wait, is this actually a debate? I was taught that “megafauna” is straightforwardly defined as any animal over 100 pounds. “It must be a really really big extinct land mammal” is absolutely not what megafauna is nor has it ever been

#so yes most of the animals on this graph are megafauna #including humans over 100 pounds

[ancientorigins]

Scientists respond to critics of revolutionary finding by confirming footprints at White Sands New Mexico are 23,000 years old, proving the early habitation of America.

#footprints #New Mexico #United States #human #megafauna #Ice Age #ancient #history #ancient origins

[slimynematode]

THE ELECTRONIC YET PALEOLITHIC GARDEN OF EDEN BEARING FRUIT UNTOUCHED BY OVERGROWN MEGAFAUNA OF FUTURES PAST

#i havent posted this though ive had it for like two months #ive been forming some kind of world thats similar to the planet of the apes in a way where the meegafauna never got killed off #and they kept developing into more intelligent creatures #until their society reaches a standstill one day when the garden of eden is recreated i think #initial idea was like electronic paleolithic megafauna #im still plagued by images of animatronicc wooly mammoth thats being annasumingly harvested for flesh but instead of meat found #its only wires #and the line between animatronic and electronic and living breathing flesh and fauna becomes blurred #because i guess animals as intelligent creatures would have a different approach to creating a society #i really just want to draw sabre tooth tigers and more neanderthals #well this one isnt a sabre tooth tiger but i didnt think of that yet #i would imagine the animals would evolve alongside the tech actually unlike humans #theres a word for where humans are evolutionary wise where we no longer evolve #anyway ive been wanting to make more art about being trans soo idk but ill keep twirling the idea round my head i think #as well as the water tower knight #art #traditional art #charcoal #mixed media #furry #sci fi #oc #oc art

[dinosaurguy]

Chauvet cave paintings, France. 30,000 years before the present times, we met some of the most majestic beings to walk the Earth, in this part of the painting you can see, horses, bison's, rhinos... All together probably scared of the pride of cave lions behind them... A forgotten scene of a lost world, frozen in time

#art #arte #paleontology #paleontología #prehistory #prehistoric #prehistoric animals #ancient #ancient humans #painting #pintura #cave art #cenozoic #megafauna #beautiful #earth #humans #animals #fauna

[correctopinionhaver]

you mourn the loss of the megafauna i mourn the loss of our 8 other brother human species. we are not the same.

#tbh i mourn the loss of the megafauna too #archeology #humans

[oneheadtoanother]

There's a timeline where moose and pumas went extinct and giant deer & cave lions survived into the anthropocene and it doesn't seem any weirder to humans there than our situation does to us. Point being we should regard megafauna as elder gods who have lingered on in a world they no longer belong to, which gives them a certain sad magic.

#fucks me up that basically all extant megafauna are going to go extinct because their position in the food chain is so precarious #just like other mass extinctions it will be the little guys with generalist body designs & broad diet who make it through #no room for the big boys in human world 😔

[lexicals]

(ID in alt)

Preliminary design for a new pathfinder pc..... she hunts mammoths >:)

#all art #doodles #pf keo #(Her name is keo) #She's a human barbarian/ranger megafauna hunter w ganzi heritage option & I care her so much even though we have not started playing yet #Big Strong Scary Unhinged Woman

[pillarsalt]

If we weren't humans but humans were still another kind of animal found in the wild, people would totally be like "ew why is it so hairless"

#humans need to GET HAIRIER #you see how people react to other hairless/mostly-hairless mammals already #chinese crested / sphynx cat / naked mole rat etc #although I guess marine mammals and certain megafauna like elephants/hippos/rhinos are exempt #but compare us to other apes and we're all weird looking and bald

[rxttenfish]

i know i did reblog that post earlier but the specific implication that we should fence in wild areas or that other continents dont have large megafauna in their local areas is just.... bothering me

like 1. restricting the movement of animals is bad for ecology, actually, and its part of why the highway system in the USA is so specifically concerning. not just because larger animals tend to maintain larger swathes of territory, but because animals need to move between areas in order to prevent genetic islands and inbreeding. this is actually part of the issue in why certain animals are endangered, because you can get too many in one area and not enough in other areas and they cannot move between areas

and 2. you?? do get megafauna interacting with and in local areas??? like even here its not an all-the-time sort of deal, and so is it in other areas, but there's still plenty of instances of elephants breaking open houses or blocking roads, and certainly plenty of instances of large cats hanging out around human trash. its not just an ''only in america!'' type deal

#all the care guide says is 'biomass' #again i think this is just a case of. ''theres a lot of usamericans on the web'' #so things that apply to usamericans get over-reported compared to the rest of the world #but like as someone who does take a major interest in human-wildlife conflict #yeah no if you live in a place with megafauna they will turn up in your back yard #also i will go out on a limb and say #its fine. like obviously there are multiple different factors here like if theres food out or an unsecured dumpster but #or the extremely rare cases of like. a starving cougar stalking someone. #but like. its fine if an animal (even a large animal) is in your yard #if its not doing anything other than its own business then whatever #i can hardly say a bear trundling through and maybe sitting down is acclimating it to people #its not convenient no but things can be inconvenient without being bad

[cloudyswritings]

gone like the Pliocene

Do you ever think about how tragic it is that we live in a world without the Pleistocene megafauna? Like we were mostly responsible for their extinction in various different ways, from humans killing several species of saber tooth cat in revenge for eating them to us straight up eating all of the mammoths because they tasted good and had warm pelts. There’s even evidence we were responsible for the extinction of megalania which was the closest thing to straight up dinosaurs in 65million years.

it’s just really sad that if we’d only be a little more cautious and thoughtful in the past that modern humans might get to enjoy seeing these species outside of museums.

in a way we’re really some of the only beings left from that time period that feel like they really belong in the Pliocene . Like sure there’s some stragglers like moose, and different species of elephants, plus big cats. But like they’re on the way out because of us too. It just seems like a shame to be the last remainder of an era we ended. It’s hard to face but we’ve made the world smaller in all the ways that matter.

There even used to be more species of whale, plus weirdos like stellars sea cow. The tragic thing there is that because of the difficulty of exploring it we’ll never really know the true measure of how much biodiversity the ocean has lost as a direct result of our actions.

maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t feel the need to build large and create things to awe ourselves if some of our Pliocene contemporaries were still here to humble us and remind us of our origins. At the end of the day we’re really nothing but a group of homicidal storytelling apes with particularly unique shoulders and sweat.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m yearning for the grandeur that we lost. I want to bear witness to the true scale of life, and to see the world as it was when we were young, not because “big animals are cool” I’d go look at dinosaurs if I wanted that, but because there should truly be a sense of loss for the creatures of the Pliocene, whose world we brought to an untimely end.

Sometimes, when I’m at a museum, I look at the bones of creatures my ancestors devoured, and wonder what the world would look like today if humanity had learned moderation.

#pliocene #megafauna #wow that was sad #It just kinda bums me out #Thoughts #Yes I’m aware it’s not as simple as we killed them all #These are just my musings on the situation #There were absolutely other factors outside of human over hunting #Anyway #what do you think?

[theygender]

Mine and my girlfriend's special interests are so funny to me bc I'm just like "hi I'm autistic and my special interest is dinosaurs uwu" and then you ask what her special interests are and it's like

The wreck of the Titanic

The Russian Revolution

The assassination of JFK

Unsolved murder cases from the 1800s

Stage magic

#my special interest is way more than just dinosaurs im oversimplifying ahdjska #dinosaurs are actually one of the least interesting parts of deep time to me #but theyre easier for me to talk about bc its the part everyone is already familiar with #my FAVORITE part of deep time is the animals that came before the dinosaurs #ESPECIALLY all the funky little dudes in the cambrian period #but also the beginning of life itself and all the animals that preceded and evolved into the classifications we know today #(the first vertebrates! the first land animals! the ancestors to amphibians and reptiles and mammals and dinosaurs!) #and also the things that came after them? like megafauna are really cool #and i love learning about the evolution of human ancestors too #and maybe even a bit of archaeology instead of paleontology if im feeling spicy (which would be humans less than 10000 years ago) #and theres other cool fields too like paleogeography?? like the study of ancient supercontinents and how they formed?? #anyways im rambling. my point is that i think its funny that i have a somewhat stereotypical special interest with facets that all connect #while she has a lot of seemingly more random ones #a while back i picked up my qpp while i had some of trixies books in my car that she had asked me to return to the library #and as i moved the 6-7 books about the russian revolution out of my passenger seat i was just like #well. you probably can tell which special interest trixie is hyperfixating on right now 😂 #other times she'll check out a bunch of jfk books or titanic books or magic books at once and go through them like crazy #and shes done a lot of personal research into different unsolved murder cases from the 1800s. even wanted to write a book at one point #i know im poking fun here but my gf is one of the coolest people in the world and has really cool special interests #it is my honor and privilege to listen to a goth girl infodump about historical murders and tragic accidents and magic o7 #rambling

[ancientorigins]

A revolutionary discovery challenges conventional timelines, sparking archaeological intrigue! Exactly when first humans migrated to North America is a topic of hot debate. Ancient footprints found in New Mexico have complicated things even further.

#Human Evolution #New Mexico #Footprints #Megafauna #Human Migration #ancient #history #ancient origins

[princessnijireiki]

anyway our CNS & brains are pretty complex, like we've barely figured out getting people with partial spinal cord damage back driving their own bodies + when we do it's still a roll of the dice & the processes are not all well understood... encephalitis can caused locked-in-ness like with sleeping sicknesses, akinetic mutism, etc where the body itself is not physically incapable of movement & action, but nothing is out there that jumps in and takes over from a driver who's paralyzed or asleep at the wheel... that's not actually a thing, it's fun speculative fiction but not representative of reality— so really, no worries lol

#the other thing is... we're megafauna? #like cordyceps hitches a ride on hymenoptera to get from point A to point B as part of their life cycle. no conscious goal #bc people often say ''oh a fungus/virus/microbe WANTS to spread & reproduce'' it doesn't WANT shit. #it is a single cell organism & s/t not even that— viruses are weird & not even always technically alive UNTIL a host or vector is infected #but my point being... we're like ''gone girl''... #amy dunne saying ''you think you'd be happy with piggybacking on my body on the way to something else? no way baby! I'm it.'' #microbes don't NEED to do all that highly specialized evolution to take over my legs like that & walk over to a tree. #cordyceps needs more than one ant. nothing needs more than a potential for human to human transmission x 8 billion. #and you don't need my brain or body control to do that when you have my blood my spit my lungs etc #path of least resistance + greatest effectiveness; a zombie virus doesn't need to evolve. we have aids we have rabies we have sars #give us scurvy and it's curtains lol... we don't need viral zombies if a new strain of polio makes a comeback. #we're the tripods in war of the worlds and it's our own planet that can kill us with a cold. #but it's more fun to catastrophize about a Big Scary Fantasy Germ than to be like ''get a DPT vaccine.'' #it won't be zombies; it will be infinitely more mundane; it will be infinitely worse.

[voice-of-illogical-sense]

'A wrinkle in the story' from ABC news:

Butchery marks on extinct kangaroo fossil found of Eyre Peninsula's west coast could reveal possible human and megafauna relationship.

#megafauna #ancient humans #eyre peninsula #Australia #ABC news #fossil record #palentology #screenshot #article #writing prompt

[windmill-ghost]

Observing spring while not in the middle of a swamp of lethargy and depression has been wild and I think it it doing things so me. Overcome with emotion and beauty when I enter the woods on a daily basis. It always looks new to me. This morning I saw a crane fly and thought "we are both like fleas lapping up the blood of the earth together."

#but fr humans are really out here experiencing the world on a megafauna scale feeling alone when we cant find things bigger than us #like nooooooooooo girl put your hand to the ground its alive #its all moving girl!!!!! #come into the woods with me you can feel the decay thrumming in the air like a heartbeat!!!!! #wg speaks