Archaeologists of the Future: Sorry About All the Livestock

Thousands of years in the future, when paleontologists unearth fossils from our current era, they're likely to notice something interesting about our society: There are far more livestock fossils than those from wild animals. Cattle, pigs, chickens and sheep — along with humans — will likely dominate our mammalian fossil record, according to an analysis published in the journal Anthropocene. “We’re radically changing the nature of the types of animals we have living on the [Earth’s] surface,” says co-author Karen Koy, a biologist at Missouri Western State University. The way humans have bred and raised livestock means there will be a sharp distinction between the fossils of animals from today and those of previous times, which are largely made up of wild species. And even if future paleontologists don’t figure out that these organisms were bred for food, the global spread of livestock will at least be easy to detect, Koy says. Humans are reshaping habitats and ecosystems, and scientists are still debating what to call these changes. Some say the years of global climate and ecological shifts caused by humans should be considered a distinct period of geologic time called the Anthropocene. It would be a delineation similar to how the Triassic era refers to the appearance of mammals and dinosaurs. But others think it’s not possible to designate a geologic era while we’re still experiencing it, Koy says. Koy and her co-author, Roy Plotnick of the University of Illinois at Chicago, conclude that there are a few reasons that future archaeologists are more likely to encounter livestock and human remains. For starters, livestock populations are huge. Some estimates put the amount of livestock mass on the planet at more than 14 times that of wild animals. Cows, pigs, sheep and chickens have spread to every continent except Antarctica, Koy says...MORE

What I take from this is the following:  Those species managed by private individuals are thriving, while those managed by public entities are decreasing