That the first humans migrated to North America near the same time as the extinctions of the megafauna has led many to believe that hunting by humans was a significant cause of those extinctions. | Support for the hypothesis that hunting by humans caused the extinctions has been provided by computer models, as well as by the discovery of some mammoths' remains near human settlements. | There is more evidence that human settlers hunted large flightless birds like the moa into extinction than there is that hunters caused the extinction of large mammals like the mammoth. | Early North Americans known as the Clovis society developed spears in order to hunt enough large animals to feed their population as it expanded across vast areas of the continent. | Scientists have proven that the human hunters of large animals who migrated across North America grew in number so quickly that they killed off most of the megafauna within a few hundred years. | Some scholars argue that the evidence linking mammoth remains to human settlements is insufficient to establish that hunting by humans was a significant factor in the megafauna extinctions. |