Some Prehistoric Giants Killed by People, Not Climate

Aug. 12, 2008 -- The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.

The research, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other very large animals on the southern island of Tasmania.

The debate centers on the skull of a giant kangaroo found in a cave in the thick rainforest of the rugged northwest of Tasmania in 2000.

Scientists dated the find at 41,000 years old, some 2,000 years after humans first began to live in the area.

"Up until now, people thought that the Tasmanian mega-fauna had actually gone extinct before people arrived on the island," a member of the British and Australian study, Professor Richard Roberts, said Tuesday.

He said that it was likely that hunting killed off Tasmania's mega-fauna -- including the long-muzzled, 264-pound giant kangaroo, a rhinoceros-sized wombat and marsupial 'lions' which resembled leopards.

Roberts, from the University of Wollongong south of Sydney, said the idea that climate change could account for the death of the animals was disputed by the fact the area had a very stable climate in the critical time period.

"Things were very climatically stable in that part of Australia and yet the mega-fauna still managed to go extinct," he said. "So it's down to humans of one sort or another."