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The following is a list of megafauna discovered by science since the beginning of the 19th century (with their respective date of discovery). Some of these may have been known to native peoples or reported anecdotally but had not been generally acknowledged as confirmed by the scientific world, until conclusive evidence was obtained for formal studies.
Nearly all of the world's isolated islands could furnish similar examples of extinctions occurring shortly after the arrival of humans, though most of these islands, such as the Hawaiian Islands, never had terrestrial megafauna, so their extinct fauna were smaller, but still displayed island gigantism. [38] [39]
The extermination of megafauna left many niches vacant, which has been cited as an explanation for the vulnerability and fragility of many ecosystems to destruction in the later Holocene extinction. The comparative lack of megafauna in modern ecosystems has reduced high-order interactions among surviving species, reducing ecological complexity ...
Extant megaherbivores are large megafaunaul herbivores that can exceed 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) in weight. They include elephants, rhinos, hippos, and giraffes, and are the largest of the land animals.
Articles relating to megafauna, large animals. The most common thresholds to be a megafauna are weighing over 46 kilograms (100 lb) (i.e., having a mass comparable to or larger than a human) or weighing over a tonne, 1,000 kilograms (2,205 lb) (i.e., having a mass comparable to or larger than an ox).
The latter, dubbed the sixth mass extinction in Earth history, is largely attributed to increased human population and activity, and may have started already during the preceding Pleistocene epoch with the demise of the Pleistocene megafauna. The following list is incomplete by necessity, since the majority of extinctions are thought to be ...
Many microfauna, such as nematodes, inhabit soil habitats. Plant parasitic nematodes inhabit the roots of various plants, while free-living nematodes live in soil water films. [3] Microfauna also inhabit freshwater ecosystems. For example, freshwater microfauna in Australia include rotifers, ostracods, copepods, and cladocerans. [4]
Marine mammals comprise over 130 living and recently extinct species in three taxonomic orders. The Society for Marine Mammalogy, an international scientific society, maintains a list of valid species and subspecies, most recently updated in October 2015. [1] This list follows the Society's taxonomy regarding and subspecies.