Final answer:
Paul Martin's Pleistocene overkill model suggests that human hunting led to the extinction of many large vertebrate animals during the late Pleistocene, evidenced by archaeological records and the timing of human arrival in various regions.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept of Pleistocene overkill, proposed by paleoecologist Paul Martin, suggests that human hunting contributed to the rapid extinction of large vertebrate animals—megafauna—at the end of the last ice age approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
This event, known as the Pleistocene Extinction, is particularly noted in North America where species such as woolly mammoths, mastodons, and saber-toothed cats, among others, vanished. Martin's hypothesis, which continues to be a subject of research and debate, correlates the arrival of human populations with the wave of extinction events across Eurasia, North and South America, and other regions, arguing that the introduction of these novel consumers dramatically impacted local ecosystems.
Archaeological evidence, such as the sequential downsizing of stone spearheads made by Cro-Magnon hunters, supports the notion that prehistoric peoples were driving these prey populations to extinction, challenging the resilience of these animals that had previously coexisted with natural predation levels. The so-called megafauna extinction includes a variety of large-bodied vertebrates whose disappearance is evident in the (sub)fossil record, suggesting a significant anthropogenic impact on the environment long before recorded history.