No single cause for mass extinctions

 A recently published study suggests that neither climate change nor human factors accounts for mass extinctions of large mammals, during the Ice Age.The inter-disciplinary research team, which included 40 institutions from around the world, included Professor Alan Haywood, a paleoclimatologist from the University of Leeds, who helped provide climate simulations for the project. A subject of much debate in recent decades, the study helps scientists know whether humans or climate change caused the mass extinctions of a third of large mammals in Eurasia and two thirds in North America.  The study concluded that neither humans nor climate change alone caused mass extinctions in the Ice Age, effectively putting an end to debate on the possibility of a single-cause.  However, despite the large amount of data used in this study, the reasons why some species survived while others went extinct remains unclear, making predictions about existing mammals’ response to future global climate change difficult.