The Biggest Losers
An artist’s reconstruction of some extinct Australian animals (clockwise from top left): Genyornis newtoni, Diprotodon optatum, Procoptodon goliah, the thylacine (which survived in Tasmania until 1936), Thylacoleo carnifex (the biggest marsupial carnivore) and the giant lizard Megalania prisca. Image courtesy of the artist Peter Trusler and Australia Post
By Richard “Bert” Roberts & Barry Brook
New evidence tightens the noose on humans as the decisive factor in the extinction of the last of the megafauna in Australia and North America.
Prof Richard ‘Bert’ Roberts is an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong. Prof Barry Brook is the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change in The Environment Institute at the University of Adelaide.
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