At www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4163502/climate-change-sparked-m… … climate change sparked mass ice age extinction event in Australia, 30,000 years ago. From turtles as big as 8 feet across, and lizards 6 feet long, the megafauna of Ausatralia was astonishing – yet they were wiped out in a mass extinction event which involved a sudden change in climate and environment. In spite of this researchers regularly blame Aboirigines for killing these big animals (using wooden spears to attack armour coated lizards). As ridiculous as this is it is never the less the only uniformitarian game in town as catastrophism is out of the question as far as most paleontologists and scientists in general are concerned. Nowadays the meme has expanded to climate change – drawing a parallel with a modern obsession. One needs to take onboard that climate change requires a vector. It doesn't just happen – out of the blue. Something causes climate to change – and in this case fairly rapidly.
During the last Ice Age Sahul (a continent that included Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea) was inhabited by a bizarre number of giant animals. These include kangaroos of 500lbs in weight, marsupial tapirs the size of horses, wombats the size of hippopotamus, and flightless birds bigger than emus. There were crocodiles 20 feet in length, turtles with horned heads and spike tails, and 6 feet long monitor lizards that must have been really scary. However, by 30,000 years ago most of them had disappeared in a mass extinction event.
At https://home.nps.gov/articles/aps-v13-iI-c15.htm … we have the government view on fossils and reporting them in Canada. The most common fossils are the remains of grazers – those animals that fed on grasses and sedges and lived in herds. It is also a fact that not all became extinct as caribou and musk ox and brown bears still live in the modern world and lived alongside the extinct fauna. We are also informed on how fossils end up where we find them. In order to be preserved or fossilised the organism must be buried soon after death (or buried at the point of death). They don't mention what causes the jumble of bones seen in many situations such as caves and muck deposits. Best avoided I suppose. Don't want one of those professor types to get apoplectic and wave their arms about – even if he is sat on his bum in a faculty miles away from the frozen north. Burial of the remains (fresh or slightly aged) prevents dispersal and stops scavengers chewing on the bones and flesh. The forces of erosion on the surface are also bypassed. Subsequently, fossils may protrude from river banks or permafrost as a result of erosional forces – such as storm surges or annual ice melt in the spring time.
At http://westerndigs.org/cave-discovered-in-south-dakota-contains-thousand… … a cave in South Dakata contains thousands of fragments and specks of bone from numerous Ice Age animals including snakes, pika, bats, as well as the shattered bones of larger animals such as bison, bear, camels and horses etc. How so many animals managed to squeeze into such a small opening is a mystery but it is thought they were dragged their by predators over many hundreds of years (but precise dating may put that idea to bed). Water is the obvious answer – but is out of the question as it raises too many parallels with an outdated debate.