The demise of most of Australia’s kangaroo species by 40,000 years ago may have had less to do with climate-caused dietary pressures and more to do with human hunters.
Dental analyses of ancient kangaroos reveal they weren’t such picky eaters as once thought, researchers report in the Jan. 10 Science. Instead, when it came to climate-related changes in food availability, the animals might have rolled with the punches, the scientists suggest.
Between 65,000 and 40,000 years ago, more than 90 percent of Australia’s large animal species went extinct. Over half were kangaroos. The primary suspects behind these extinctions were thought to be human hunters, who had arrived sometime between
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