Clovis-age overkill didn't take out California's flightless sea duck

The ducks' lifestyle served them well for millennia, the researchers noted. Many of the birds nested on the Channel Islands off the California Coast, where few predators existed before humans arrived. After seafaring Paleoindians colonized the islands about 13,000 years ago, however, Chendytes may have been driven to smaller and more remote islands. Human population growth, the development of increasingly sophisticated watercraft, and the introduction of dogs and foxes to the islands probably put greater pressure on the birds. Eventually, the flightless duck, like great auk in the North Atlantic, had no place to run.

The five co-authors with Erlandson, an archaeologist in the UO department of anthropology, were: Terry L. Jones (corresponding author), head of social sciences at California Polytechnic; archaeologist Judy F. Porcasi and Thomas A. Wake of UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology; H. Dallas Jr. of CAL FIRE; and Rae Schwaderer of CDPR. The paper, published online in advance of regular publication, is freely available on the PNAS Web site.

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Source: Jon Erlandson, professor of anthropology, director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, 541-346-5115,

Links: Erlandson faculty page: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Eanthro/faculty/erlandson.html; UO anthropology department: http://www.uoregon.edu/~anthro/; Museum of Natural and Cultural History: http://natural-history.uoregon.edu/; T.L. Jones faculty page: http://cla.calpoly.edu/~tljones/; the full paper (PDF): http://tinyurl.com/yvmjxe;