An ancient bone recasts how Indigenous Australians treated megafauna

Australia’s First Peoples were more early paleontologists than extinction-driving butchers, a group of scientists argue.

For decades, the debate over whether the first humans to inhabit present-day Australia contributed to the extinction of the country’s ancient megafauna has raged and smoldered. Humans arrived at the landmass known as Sahul around 65,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch, when it was home to giant animals including huge marsupials, giant flightless birds and monitor lizards up to five meters long.

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