Latest Australian megafauna Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has completed a major review of the available evidence to conclude that most species of gigantic animals that once roamed the Australian continent disappeared before the arrival of humans. These findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and challenge the claim that humans were the primary cause of extinction for...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Scientists may have finally established the explanation for the disappearance of the giant koala and other Australian megafauna. Between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago, around 60 species of mammals, predominantly foraging herbivores called browsers, went extinct. These animals included 19 species that weighed over 100 kilograms, like the rhinoceros-sized giant wombat and half-ton marsupial Palorchestes azael. Slightly smaller animals like the flightless bird...
Mankind most likely had a hand in the extinction of the giant animals known as "megafauna" according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).A team of Australian researchers, led by Australian National University School of Archaeology and Anthropology Professor Matthew Spriggs, found the leg bones of meiolaniid, or horned turtles, on the island of Efate.However, they did not find any shells or skulls, and since the bones were...
A new scientific paper co-authored by a University of Adelaide researcher reports strong evidence that humans, not climate change, caused the demise of Australia's megafauna - giant marsupials, huge reptiles and flightless birds - at least 40,000 years ago.In a paper published today in the international journal Science, two Australian scientists claim that improved dating methods show that humans and megafauna only co-existed for a relatively short time after people inhabited Australia,...
Experts in Britain and Australia report that many prehistoric species became extinct as a result of humans, not climate change. In places like Tasmania, human hunting may have wiped out the large ancient animals, the scientists said. It's a pattern that may also have played out on other islands throughout the world, such as Great Britain. For years, scientists have debated the underlying cause of widespread extinctions of a large numbers of species during the end of the last Ice Age....
By Price, Gilbert Analysis of thousands of Diprotodon fossils has resolved the debate about how many species of this ancient giant wombat existed - and uncovered some clues to their behaviour. Imagine you could travel back in time to a period not more than 100,000 years ago. What sort of world would you have seen? What was the landscape like ? What sort of animals would you likely encounter? This was a harsh period in the Earth's history, subjected to massive shifts in climate and prolonged...
CANBERRA, Australia - Australia's giant prehistoric animals, including 10-foot-tall kangaroos and wombat-like creatures as big as a rhinoceros, were likely wiped out by aboriginal settlers, not climate change, a researcher said Tuesday.The question of what killed Australia's so-called megafauna during the last Ice Age divides paleontologists.The most popular theories are that climate change drove the giants to extinction more than 40,000 years ago or that Aborigines, who arrived in Australia...
