What were the causes of the Holocene extinction?
477346
You would be right in saying humans.\n\nThe Holocene includes the last 10,000 years of earth's existance also known as the "age of man".\n\nThis extinction, I believe, includes a little time prior to the Holocene called the Pleistocene.\n\nMammoths, saber-toothed cats, ground sloths, & North American horses were included in this extinction as well as many others but these are the most well known.\n\nAt this time, the climate was changing, as it still continues to do today. However, it was dramatic enough to affect native species.\n\nSo you are right on both counts actually.\n\nOverhunting/killing by increase in human population & the climate changes.
223014
Movement of the tectonic plates resulted in the breaking up of "Pangea", the super continent. Here is more information for you including a video clip on the last link. The video takes a bit to load.\n\nHave fun!
157711
It is Global Warming.  Geologically speaking we are still coming out of the last ice age.  We are on in a natural cycle which has been accerated by pollution.
375716
No one knows. Earth has gone through many climatic cycles. We could be headed for another ice age.
1180129
definitely humans, no other species is known to cause so many other species go extinct or near extinct and change so large areas to worse. \n\nsome people say that human influence is natural influence because man is part of nature. than we have to face the fact that we are a perfect natural DISASTER, just like a masssive asteroid on collision course
1065195
Every 64 million years or so, the earth is hit by gigantic comet and the impact is so tremendous that vast amounts of dust and debris is sent into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun. This causes massive drops in temperature sending the earth into an ice age, wiping out all life on earth. This very same catastrophe wiped out the lifeforms on the planet before the dinosaurs existed, and the lifeforms before those, since this planet has not been hit once, but many times, making this an incredibly ancient planet. Don't know if 64 million years will have passed since the last ice age by 2026 though.
82564
It is thought that the last ice age made it possible for humans to migrate to the Americas when the water level dropped, because a lot of water was piled up on the continents in ice sheets. \n\nPeople had to migrate to find enough food, probably mainly to the lower latitudes. \n\nIt might have forced humans to make all kinds of adaptations, and develop new skills. \n\nHumans had to wear different clothing. \n\nHumans probably had to change their diets. \n\nPrevious living areas would have been covered by ice and uninhabitable. \n\nThere might have been more diseases, and less food, and more people probably died.
342234
actually there is a very likely (and widely accepted) theory out there that there was a period in which the earth got bombarded with comets, thousands of comets per minute and that the earth got really hot and became covered in ashes that covered the sun and prevented most life from living.  And then later the ice in the comets helped to form all the water and such.
194769
The prevailing theory at this time is an asteroid impact that caused a nuclear winter. more than half the life on earth is thought to have become extinct at this time. I believe it was at the beginning of the cenazoic era. as evidence there is a layer of iridium at this geologic layer that covers the entire planet. Otherwise iridium is pretty rare on earth but quite common in asteroids.\n\nWhile this event may have contributed to the onset of an iceage, the energies involved were probably not great enough to give credit for an iceage.
399368
I just had to do a poster for my historic geology class.\n50 mya= Earliest whales, molluscs cover from mass extinction\n40 mya= Tropical forests at high latitudes, Arboreal browing animals dominant, earliest bats, peak of warming.\n35 mya= Excticion of rummulitids and other warm-water marien life, resuption of arc volcanism, Climatic deterioration, early Antarctic glaciation.\n30 mya= Forests break up due to cooling and drying\n25 mya= Giant Hornless Rhinoceros predominant, San Andreas Fault created, beginning of Tejas Sequence of ocean fluctuations.\n20 mya= Grassy savannahs monnon in mid latitudes, Antarctic glaciers return.\n15 mya= Mastodonts escape Africa, Diversification of fast-running grazing mammals, Cascaade Arc Basin and Range extension created.\n10 mya= Steppes Replace Savannas, Arctic icecap created.\n5 mya= Extinction of many savannah mammals.\n4 mya= Extinction of large mammals at end of plesitocene.  Mediterranean dries up.
1126036
What really drives species into extinction is destruction of habitat.  A great deal of land is cleared every year of agriculture and new homes.  To preserve biodiversity people would have to curtail that practice.
114189
The onset of the ice age.
746428
The Do-Do is a well known extinction, they died out because the people ate them all. Predators got to their eggs and there wasn't any kind of conservation going on then.
910721
pollution and devastation to the environment\n\nspecies invasion\n\nover consumption leading to extinction\n\nand, basically natural disasters
24083
It appears as though man has decreased the productivity of the oceans, by runoff of fertilizers and pollutants. Many places like Newfoundland's Grand Banks and the Chesapeake Bay have suffered disasterous declines in productivity. \n\nMan might have also changed the carbon dioxide and dust content of the atmosphere, which might contribute to climate change. Man definitely introduced CFCs into the atmosphere, which has enhanced the size and severity of the springtime ozone holes at the poles.
445169
Nobody knows for certain since it was so long ago.  Some historians believe that environmental changes may have been responsible for this move, with certain important rivers changing course. However, there is also some evidence suggestive of an invasion and destruction of Olmec artifacts around this time.  So, take from that what you will.
344672
Global Warming.....glaciers melting and too much water for the land.