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A marsupial lion skeleton in the Naracoorte Caves, South Australia. The term Australian megafauna refers to the megafauna in Australia [1] during the Pleistocene Epoch.Most of these species became extinct during the latter half of the Pleistocene, and the roles of human and climatic factors in their extinction are contested.
The third hypothesis shared by some scientists is that human impacts and natural climate changes led to the extinction of Australian megafauna. About 75% of Australia is semi-arid or arid, so it makes sense that megafauna species used the same fresh water resources as humans. This competition could have led to more hunting of megafauna. [118]
Due to the evidence that Paleoindians hunted now extinct megafauna (large animals), and that following a period of overlap, most large animals across the Americas became extinct as part of the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinctions, it has been argued by many authors that hunting by Paleoindians was an important factor in the extinctions, [90 ...
Megafauna also play a role in regulating and stabilizing the abundance of smaller animals. During the Pleistocene, megafauna were diverse across the globe, with most continental ecosystems exhibiting similar or greater species richness in megafauna as compared to ecosystems in Africa today.
"Clovis people were highly sophisticated hunters, with skills refined over more than 10,000 years hunting megafauna in the steppes that stretched from eastern Europe to the Yukon.
[218] [219] [220] Human hunting and butchery of large megafauna, particularly mammoths and mastodon, would likely have put people in competition with Arctodus simus. Defense against these large bears and the abandonment of carcasses are plausible outcomes, [ 18 ] along with the possible caching and disposal of carcass remains underwater to mask ...
This has variously been explained as: retention of a hypothetically tall ancestral condition; higher-quality diet and nutrition due to the hunting of megafauna which later became uncommon or extinct; functional adaptation to increase stride length and movement efficiency while running during a hunt; increasing territorialism among later Cro ...
In zoology, megafauna (from Greek μέγας megas "large" and Neo-Latin fauna "animal life") are large animals. The most common thresholds to be a megafauna are weighing over 46 kilograms (100 lb) [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] (i.e., having a mass comparable to or larger than a human ) or weighing over a tonne , 1,000 kilograms (2,205 lb) [ 2 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ...