Overkill at Olduvai Gorge

Abstract

DR LEAKEY has replied¹ to my proposal² that the pattern of extinction of large mammals at the end of the Middle Pleistocene in Africa represents overkill by prehistoric man. If one adopts all Dr Leakey's suggestions for updating or factually improving the African list of extinct mammals, the net effect is trivial—an increase in the number of living large genera from forty to forty-one, an increase in later Pleistocene extinction from more than twenty-six to more than twenty-nine genera, a decrease in earlier Pleistocene extinction from nineteen to eighteen genera, and an overall change in the amount of later Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in Africa, as computed in Table 3, ref. 2, from thirty-nine to forty-one per cent. I do not see how the omission of the genera Leakey adds to the Early Pleistocene group “… puts the whole picture out of balance”¹.