Why do elephants and tigers still roam in India? Study offers clues
Tropical Asia and Africa are the only regions on Earth that retain diverse populations of large, land-dwelling mammals, such as elephants, rhinos, and big cats. A new study co-authored by Yale researcher Advait M. Jukar suggests that the persistence of mammalian megafauna in the Indian Subcontinent is related to the great beasts’ long coexistence there with homo sapiens and other human ancestors.
The study, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology and based on a novel dataset drawn from 51 fossil sites in present-day India documents a low-magnitude extinction that began about 30,000 years ago. That was about 30,000 years after modern humans arrived in the Indian Subcontinent.
Why do elephants and tigers still roam in India? Study offers clues
Tropical Asia and Africa are the only regions on Earth that retain diverse populations of large, land-dwelling mammals, such as elephants, rhinos, and big cats. A new study co-authored by Yale researcher Advait M. Jukar suggests that the persistence of mammalian megafauna in the Indian Subcontinent is related to the great beasts’ long coexistence there with homo sapiens and other human ancestors.
The study, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology and based on a novel dataset drawn from 51 fossil sites in present-day India documents a low-magnitude extinction that began about 30,000 years ago. That was about 30,000 years after modern humans arrived in the Indian Subcontinent.