| Title | Early Human Species Likely Driven to Extinction by Climate Change | |
| Date | Friday October 16 2020, @08:00PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the lost-their-niche dept. | ||
Early human species likely driven to extinction by climate change:
What happened to the hominins that came before Homo sapiens?
[...] Until now, most hominin research has focused on when and where the earliest human species emerged, as well as how they dispersed out of Africa. And more attention has been paid to the disappearance of the dinosaurs than the demise of our earliest human relatives, researchers say.
[...] The models showed, with surprising consistency, that extinct hominin species lost large swaths of their climatic niche just prior extinction.
If not the main driver of Homo extinctions, the findings suggest climate change played a sizable role in the disappearance of our earliest human relatives.
[...] "The message is that we'd be better off taking extreme measures against the global change effects," [Lead study author Pasquale Raia, associate professor of paleobiology at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy] said. "If even the most mentally powerful species on Earth couldn't find a way to resist climate change, how could we expect the modern biota will fare better?"
"I don't believe we Homo sapiens risk extinction by climate change, but we're giving ourselves a miserable future, acting like greedy idiots," Raia said.
Journal Reference:
Pasquale Raia. Past Extinctions of Homo Species Coincided with Increased Vulnerability to Climatic Change, One Earth (DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.09.007)
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printed from SoylentNews, Early Human Species Likely Driven to Extinction by Climate Change on 2024-04-19 11:17:41