Hunting or climate change? Megafauna extinction debate narrows:
What is the oldest debate in Australian science? Probably, the argument over what caused extinction of our Pleistocene megafauna – the diprotodons, giant kangaroos, marsupial tapirs, über-echidnas and other big and bizarre creatures that used to live here.
In 1877 the great English anatomist Sir Richard Owen suggested that these big animals had been driven extinct by “the hostile agency of man”. That is, hunting did it, in a process we now call overkill. Other people responded that climate change must have been the cause, and it was on.
A string of recent studies from a wide range of disciplines – geochronology, palaeoecology, palaeontology, and ecological modelling – have supported Owen’s opinion. But the argument continues. Why?
