The Pleistocene Murders - Forrest Bishop, Paleobiologist

A conversation with Forrest Bishop about the Pleistocene Murders
- a whodunnit theory that seeks the cause of the megafaunal
extinction that rocked the planet during the most recent period
of glaciations - from 2.5 million years ago to about 10,000 years
ago. While most theories - including a recent paper from Tel Aviv
university point the finger at increasing populations of hungry
humans, Forrest proposes that this ignores a crucial, global
change that occurred over the course of the Pleistocene: a global
decrease in carbon dioxide levels.   In the Pleistocene
Murders, he proposes that falling carbon dioxide levels led to
the dominance of c4 plants - those who can flourish at relatively
low partial pressures of CO2. This evolutionary advantage allowed
grasslands to dominate the globe... which, in turn, led to a
decrease in the caloric content of the trophic foundation of the
world's ecosystems. It's an excellent story that binds together
geology, chemistry, and biology... and even a little bit of
spirit, as humans have an emergent role on the planet that we get
to at the very end of the conversation  

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Pleistocene Murders Blog:
http://www.castaliahouse.com/otherscience-stories-the-pleistocene-murders-part-1/
 

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