[Taxacom] Toba extinction and orangutans

[Ken Kinman]

Hi John,
     Life would certainly have survived in Sumatra, but tree-dwelling 
vertebrates would have been almost completely wiped out in my opinion.  If 
you were a small mammal hibernating in the ground at the time, you could 
have slept through the worst of it.  However, orangutans wouldn't have stood 
a chance unless they happened to be living in a cave on the other end of 
Sumatra, and even then they would have probably starved once they came out.  
As for local insects surviving the New Zealand megaeruption, I wonder if 
they were the kind of insects that feed on dead material.  On the other 
hand, I would bet that any surviving butterflies were probably located on 
the other side of New Zealand.

     In any case, I still think the surviving orangutans were probably on 
the mainland, possibly in southern China or "Burma", but most likely in 
India.  Even there the population may have crashed to only a few hundred 
individuals.  Humans in Africa fared better (maybe 10,000 surviving).  Not 
sure how badly the Neanderthals in Europe would have been affected, since 
they were already cold-adapted and more accustomed to harsh conditions.
    ----Ken Kinman
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John Grehan wrote:

.... I suspect (and it's only my imagination) that life
>generally survived in Sumatra and the surrounding areas although local
>extinction, and extinction of localized taxa would no doubt have
>occurred.
>
>As an anecdote, I recall that local endemics of some insects are found
>near the Taupo Crater in New Zealand (this was one of the other super
>volcanoes sites mentioned) and it has been suggested that they survived
>despite their proximity to the volcano because a lot of material was
>blasted out horizontally, so fast that some forests survived on the
>leeward slopes of nearby mountains. That might be a load of old crock so
>I am happy to be corrected on that one....