End of the Megafauna: The Fate of the World’s Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals: MacPhee, Ross D E, Schouten, Peter: 9780393249293: Amazon.com: Books

Aside from a lot of great pictures of extinct mega fauna this book does not really add much new for people who have been following the mega fauna extinction debate. I felt that the tone was a little biased against Martin, but he did conclude that most of the Conservation Biologists feel that Martin’s Overkill hypothesis is best explains the extinction for many large animals. My understanding from talking with some Conservation Biologists is that for long lived species with low adult mortality a slight increase in adult mortality can lead to extinction in 100s to a 1,000 years. It is not necessary to kill all the individuals of a species to drive it to extinction. Small fragmented populations are much more vulnerable to stochastic events. Many people that I know seem to believe that climate change stressed many of the mega fauna, however if it weren’t for over hunting many of the large species would have survived.

The author seems to prefer his idea that some unknown disease killed the mega fauna but offers no evidence. There are many obvious reasons why a unknown pathogen does not seem likely. The pathogen would have had to kill many divers species, many of them separated by great distances, continents and islands.

I did enjoy reading this book and have loaned it to several friends. This book does not really present any new information but does have a lot of pictures and gives estimates to how large some of the mega fauna really were.