Originally Posted by
Keyser_Soze1:
“Did humans wipe out the Megafauna?
We were certainly the dominant force (although there were also climatic factors involved).
https://twilightbeasts.wordpress.com...the-megafauna/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...01566/abstract”
I've mentioned Australia before. The evidence for a human-caused extinction there doesn't stack up.
The earliest verified evidence of humans in Australia are stone flakes, from tool production, near Lake Mungo, dated to about 45,000-50,000 years ago. But one very prominent paper on the extinctions, Roberts et al (2001), which put a date on the extinctions of 46,400 years, acknowledges that 40% of the megafauna they examined were already extinct by 100,000 years ago.
The earliest evidence of humans even interacting with the Australian megafauna isn't until about 35,000 years ago, at a place called Cuddie Springs. Fillios et al, (2010) examined over 8,000 bone fragments from the site and found a total of nine fragments that had cut marks, that may have been caused by humans, and six fragments that had turned white due to burning, which usually only happens in campfires.
That's all.
There's much more evidence for a drying environment starting about 400,000 years ago, becoming increasingly arid about 75,000 years ago and possibly being the cause of the disappearance of the rainforests from much of Australia.
On that note, this is a lovely little dromaeosaur tooth (0.5 - 1 mm in size) that I found while volunteering at the Natural History Museum.
http://s4.postimg.org/txkld5xwt/Theropod_Tooth_01.jpg
