Then, a geological moment ago, the world lost half its enormous land mammals. These are known as the “near-time” extinctions because, to geologists, events that happened only a few thousand years ago might as well have happened yesterday. These near-time extinctions, which represent the biggest hit to large land vertebrates since the biblical chaos at the end of the Cretaceous, follow a pattern unlike any other: avoiding the marine realm altogether, leaving the flora virtually intact, and primarily affecting large, charismatic land mammals.
