…in Africa, not climate change.
"Millions of years ago, the wild savannas of Africa were teeming with carnivore wildlife, much more diverse than what we see today: lions, hyenas and other large-bodied carnivores. Paleontologist Lars Werdelin at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm suggests the carnivore species decimation that began roughly two million years ago can be attributed to the intervention of early human ancestors that began eating meat at the time, consuming both prey and predator.
Over the past few thousands of years human intervention has led to the extinction of a number of species, ranging from moas—giant, flightless birds that lived in New Zealand—to most lemurs in Madagascar. Plants and water creatures weren't spared either.Where and when humans or their ancestors began to make dramatic changes to the ecosystem is a matter of debate that has remained largely unresolved
Fossil records collected from eastern and southern Africa, like Lothagam on the western shore of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya , reveal that some seven million years ago the plains of Africa were dominated by varied group of carnivores: sabertooth cats, strange long-legged hyenas, giant bear dogs (members of an extinct family of carnivores called Amphicyonidae), a leopard-size member of the mustelid family to which badgers belong, as well as small carnivores related to today's civets and mongooses also prowled there. Four million years ago, other carnivores began to surface: hyena species ancestral to the brown hyena found in southern Africa today, modern-looking big cats, early spotted hyenas, several dog species, giant otters that have no modern counterpart, a giant civet and a variety of smaller carnivores…"
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Amicalement
Armand
