This hub is a culmination of years of experience, pondering, scientific analysis and common sense. Let's first define terms. Megafauna: derived from ancient Greek megas meaning large + new Latin fauna meaning animal. In other words, all the big ass animals archetypical of the last Ice Age. We're talking about your everyday mammoth, sabre tooth tiger, giant ground sloth etal. All of these animals and others became extinct or vanished, disappeared, were wiped out during the Pleistocene Era (the last Ice Age) Science has been pondering what circumstances caused this event since the first discovery of giant tusks eroding out of the banks of the rivers in Siberia. They have come up with numerous theories and possibilities: The Death Star theory (a huge chunk of rock and iron was hurled into our planet), The Giant Dust Storm or Volcanic Ash Storm which pretty much suffocated or starved everything out. Man hunted them to extinction. Catastrophic climate change. These are great theories put forth by even greater men and women and I have no doubt, they hold these dear to their hearts and may have even used them as doctoral dissertations or perhaps earned tenure at a major university professing them. I'm not here to steal their thunder nor to humiliate them or belittle their work for they are honorable men and women. But, I've watched CSI: Miami. What would Horatio think?

My theory begins: I owned a 1987 Mitsubishi Montero, blue in color with gold stripe. One Saturday evening, I parked it in my driveway as usual and retired to my den to enjoy some television. Later that evening, I went to bed, which was not unusual for me. After eight hours of very restful sleep, I awoke, showered, shaved and with keys in hand, went to drive my 1987 Mitsubishi Montero, blue in color with gold stripe to the Internation House of Pancakes for breakfast. Upon exiting the house and walking toward my driveway I noticed that my Montero was not there. Now, I didn't exclaim or even imagine that a cosmic death star came and zapped my Montero into extinction. Or that a dust storm had made it mysteriously disappear. I didn't even think for a moment that perhaps this was some sort of global climate change from which the earth may never recover. NO, I instead trusted my instincts and I thought with my mind and exclaimed with my mouth, "MY 1987 MITSUBISHI MONTERO, BLUE IN COLOR WITH GOLD STRIPE HAS BEEN STOLEN!" I was absolutely right as proven by its recovery from a soybean field in Kansas where it had been abandoned by joy riders.

Now. let's turn the clock back, say 10,000 years or so (the Pleistocene). Our ancestors are in a cave at the edge of the great glaciers, tagging their walls with pictures of their favorite foods, mammoth, giant ground sloths and perhaps their nemisis, the sabre tooth tiger. A typical Saturday night. They are all sitting around the campfire hoping someone would invent the wheel so they could drive south out of the ice, waiting to evolve into a carbon based society so they could invent the internal combustion engine to produce green house gases and create global warming. They were really trying to get rid of all that damned ice. With no evolutionary breakthrough that night, off to bed they went. The next morning dawned icy as it had for the last several thousand years without change. They sharpened up their Clovis points, hefted their atlatls, and off they went in search of breakfast to the great frozen praries of North America, or as they referred to them, the International House of Mammoths. Much to their surprise, upon casting their keen hunters eyes across the frozen steppes, no mammoth were to be seen. They searched from horizon to horizon and still no mammoth. Their first thoughts possibly turned to their old nemesis, the sabre tooth. Those tigers probably ate them all while we were sleeping. Upon further investigation, they realized, there were no sabre tooths either. That, my friend, is what science refers to as "the mass extinction event of the Pleistocene-Holocene Epoch" So what happened? THEY WERE STOLEN !!! Just as my 1987 Mitsubishi Montero, blue in color with gold stripe was stolen.

Here's what really happened. That Saturday night, of 10,000 years hence, our ancestors, Clovis man and woman, were minding their own business, living the typical ice age family life. The mammoths were grazing peacefully in the fields beyond. Unbeknownst to any human or animal on that fateful night, a group of fraternity brothers from a solar system yet to be named were on a sneak. Driving their low-ride, rat rod, space craft they spotted the Big Blue Marble and said, "Let's drop by for a look see." What did they find? A whole bunch of really big, really cool animals. They stole them as a prank. They whisked them back to their planet where today the cosmic rush includes getting drunk and riding mammoths and running from sabre tooths. Having spent most of my life around college students, I know it was all meant in good fun, but enough is enough.

It is time now, that we have managed to evolve into the carbon based society that our ancestors so wished for, that we demand, as a planet, united BRING OUR MEGAFAUNA BACK! With our advanced technology, I propose that we send out hundreds, perhaps thousands of small satellites, kind of a cosmic telegram if you will, "To all persons or person involved in the theft of the Megafauna from the Big Blue Marble, Third Rock from the Sun, or Planet Earth, RETURN SAID PROPERTY AT ONCE!" We can further guarantee amnesty. Additional instructions should include that they deposit said Megafauna in areas on the planet where no one is watching so as not to create hysteria. We suggest that egress points be Siberia, the darkest depths of the African continent, or anywhere within the state of Nebraska. We would not be opposed to you dropping a few of the Sabre Tooths and Mammoths off in downtown L.A. or Central Park. After all, we appreciate a good laugh too.

And that, my friends, is the truth, the way I see it and this is what is wrong with American Education today.

Thanks for indulging me. DrJim