The human cause of mega fauna extinctions after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is most persuasive in North America because the extinctions coincide with the first human migrations. But such extinctions occurred around the world. There is no such apparent extinction events after the preceding GMs.
What changed was an explosion of human culture and human populations.
We did it.
Large North American mammals (megafauna) went extinct (85%) at the end of the last ice age (15,000-10,000 years ago), but seem were not synchronous nor universal, and the reasons proffered for them include climate change and humans.
Different animals seem to have disappeared at different times and for different reasons in the Late Pleistocene, some migrating South and some migrating North.
Recently, evidence of the survival of several species of giant ground sloth has been discovered in the West Indies, to as late as 5,000 years ago, coincident with the arrival of humans in the region.
I wonder if they tasted like chicken?
