Australian researchers say climate, not human hunters, did in giant marsupials

Huge wombats and marsupial lions that once roamed and hopped about in Australia apparently went extinct 10,000 years before the first human arrived in the area, reports a University of Melbourne team. The Australian ran the story Aug. 12 under Jane Williams‘s byline. Reuters has since picked it up. The report, Williams writes, is to be published in the journal Quaternary Research. The last evidence of mega-fauna, a professor tells her, is about 55,000 years ago. The date comes from study of sediments near Lake Menindee in New South Wales. The first humans arrived around 45,000 years ago. The evidence is in improved methods of radiocarbon dating.

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