Early destroyers of Enviroment?

Remember the destruction caused by the Polinesians in the islands of the Pacific, particularly in Easter. Man has being destroying its environment from the very beginning. Pinguin

there was a man sized bird on new zealand that the first maori settlers (and also first humans on New Zealand) hunted to extinction.

Here is an image of the Moa (or Dinornis) skeleton - as explained by Omar.

Enormous birds - though they were herbivores surprisingly.


Edited by Knights - 01-Feb-2007 at 06:18

I think overhunting was only a minor factor. Many of them just died out due to the dramatic environmental change that they could not cope with. If human beings were the main reason for the destruction of animal species, than how come there were still alot of elephants until the Europeans came in to colonize Africa?

Yeah, maybe someone would give some good explaination for this. I thought it was rubbish because population of mankind wasn't big enough to influence the environment in that large scale.

Originally posted by Knights Here is an image of the Moa (or Dinornis) skeleton - as explained by Omar. Enormous birds - though they were herbivores surprisingly.

Originally posted by pekau Yeah, maybe someone would give some good explaination for this. I thought it was rubbish because population of mankind wasn't big enough to influence the environment in that large scale.

That was during Imperial Age or just before that, I think.

Originally posted by Knights Originally posted by pekau Dodo were eliminated because Western hunters arrived to Austrialia and hunted them down for furs... until they died. Though their population was not so large, Dodos were weak prey, and the introduction of efficient hunting methods (Ex.Gunpowder weapons) and their purpose being purely profit rather than for food finally destroyed all their species. Hmm...Mauritius you mean? Also, they didn't really have fur The way they became extinct was due to introduced to animals, the fact that they were fearless of humans and flash flooding (result of recent studies).

Maybe a bit off-topic, but during the Cenozoic, on the isolated island-continent of South America the food chain was dominated for tens of millions of years by a group of flightless birds called the Phororhacids. They may have been the closest thing possible to a living Dinosaur in the age of mammals; at least one species, Titanis, seems to have had claws at the tips of its wings, effectively making them arms. After the closure of the Panama land bridge around 3 million years ago, they crossed over to North America, and they might have been still in existence when the first humans arrived. (But to tell the truth, there is no evidence for that.)