Did humans wipe out Australia's big beasts?

摘要

TO ANIMALS unfortunate enough to fall in, it was a death trap. To palaeontologists, it was a sensational discovery. Now the first detailed analysis of a spectacular cache of fossilised prehistoric "marsupial lions", giant wombats and kangaroos, owls and parrots discovered in a cave in Australia suggests that humans killed off the continent's megafauna.The cache, found in the Nullarbor Plain in south-central Australia, contains fossils of 69 species of mammal, bird and reptile, and includes many complete skeletons, including the first of a marsupial lion (see Photo). There are also eight species of kangaroo that had never been recorded before.