Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The University of New South Wales, birthplace of the Ship of Fools, sees no connection between the arrival of Australian Aboriginals, and the subsequent rapid demise of a dangerous apex predator which dominated Australia for millions of years.
Climate change the likely killer of Australian marsupial lion
19 OCT 2018 UNSW MEDIA
Scientists believe Thylacoleo carnifex was probably a victim of the drying out of Australia, which began about 350,000 years ago, rather than from the impact of humans.
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For nearly two million years the marsupial lion was one of Australia’s top predators. The animals were sized between leopards and African lionesses but had a bite that was about 80 per cent as strong as a large lion, enabling it to crush bones with its powerful jaws.
The study led by Professor Larisa DeSantis of Vanderbilt University posited that, despite being well-adapted for consuming flesh and bone, Thylacoleo was likely the victim of the drying out of Australia, which began about 350,000 years ago.
The marsupial lions persisted for thousands of years afterwards, as more and more forests disappeared. The animals survived even past the influx of humans to the continent roughly 60,000 years ago. Ultimately, the loss of forest habitats likely led to the extinction of these predators, with the last known record sometime between approximately 35 and 45 thousand years ago.
“These data provide evidence that the marsupial lion was an ambush predator and relied on prey that occupied denser cover,” Professor DeSantis said.
“As the landscape became drier and forests less-dense, these apex predators may have become less-effective hunters and succumbed to extinction.
“The study of these ancient fossils provides us with cautionary lessons for the future: climate change can impact even the fiercest predators.”
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Despite the dryness of the Australian continent, there are substantial forested areas, along with vast areas covered in dry scrubland vegetation which could potentially provide cover to well camouflaged ambush predators.
Feral cats are becoming a serious nuisance in the Australian outback. While feral cats are nowhere near as large as Thylacoleo carnifex, and of course feral cats are not marsupials, if anecdotal evidence is to be believed our feral cats are rapidly growing larger. Perhaps there is a vacant ecological niche waiting to be filled.
Thanks to everyone today! As a zoologist, Mr Worrall’s piece and your comments are the most fun I’ve had all week.
Thylacoleo carnifex died out about 20,000 years after the arrival of humans. This is not “shortly”. So it probably was a combination of climate drying / loss of forest, and competitive and hunting pressure from humans, that led to their extinction.
A number of other species worldwide did die out more or less immediately on arrival of modern humans, from the 60kya out-of-Africa event (yes there were earlier breakouts yawn yawn but this was the first of behaviourally modern humans). This included all other archaic humans, such as Neanderthals, Denisovans and Floresiensis (the hobbits).
It is interesting now however to see if indeed a new feline predator could become established.
Depends upon when you think that humans first arrived in Australia in numbers.
Tasfay,
The large prey species of the marsupial lion are also extinct, so a new feline predator would have to make do with the medium-sized herbivores which remain.
When humans first occupied Australia remains controversial. We probably hit New Guinea first, which is connected to Oz during the low sea levels of glacial intervals. The earliest evidence of human occupation of Oz is from a NT rock shelter dating to around 55 Ka. The oldest actual fossils are some 10,000 years younger. So the disappearance of the marsupial lion approximately 35 to 45 thousand years ago isn’t such a big gap.
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/migration-to-australia/
The arrival of our species “triggered dramatic and permanent changes to the continent’s landscape and its wildlife”. Roughly 60 species of Oz’ “large mammals and birds became extinct around 45,000 to 50,000 years ago as a result of massive fires that were likely set by early humans”.
Not to mention reptiles!
“Thylacoleo carnifex died out about 20,000 years after the arrival of humans.”
References please.
I visited a natural history museum here in Dunedin NZ 30 years ago, and the moa display was signposted with a narrative that the moa had died out naturally shortly after the arrival of man. This when the middens (stone ovens) full of cooked moa bones were already well known. The stupid, it hurt then and hurts now.
From Wikipedia (no reason to suppose that this particular entry is unreliable):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacoleo
So – the idea that T. carnifex was wiped out by climate change pre-dates the UNSW paper, and the paper is trying to resurrect an old idea. Another Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial_lion) gives another clue:
We can probably expect to see these Wikipedia entries changed soon to support the UNSW paper. That’s fair enough, if the UNSW paper is truly new knowledge. But is it? The timing of the extinction with (a) humans changing their environment and killing their prey, and (b) a stable climate, would suggest otherwise. I doubt that the UNSW study is capable of distinguishing between climate change and human-driven environment change.
40.000 – 60.000 years ago man migrated from Africa – where humankind began, rom one cell dividing.
It had to be before that – how long would it have taken African man to walk to some place in the Asia Pacific Region – from whence they SWAM to Australia ??
* Neanderthals were sailing the Mediterranean 100.000 years ago, Neanderthals were ancient mariners.
So it is safe to assume that migrants from Africa, or the descendents of the original migrants from Africa, did not swim to Australia from the Asia Pacific Region, they built boats & sailed across.
We do that a lot throughout history –
“It was us, white man,”
“It was us, they were to primitive, to dumb.”
I believe that the Australian indigenous people were actually spawned here in Australia.
I am not big on this “IT ALL HAPPENED IN ONE PLACE CALLED AFRICA” – many of us have discarded Darwinism as a mistaken illusion / fanciful, so hey !!
Why is much of Africa / the Middle East desert ?
If you look at pictures of the dinosaurs & the surrounding greenery / trees etc.
The trees then were the same size as they are today – but / & dino was several times too large to fit in that scene ??
Dino ate all the green stuff & dies out & the desert proves it.
Or Dino is a fabricated bit of history.
DNA /GENETICS would make – MATHEMATICALLY – the surrounding scene as big or as small as its animal kingdom.
We have not been to the moon & Dinosaurs never existed.
R,
Wow! Where to begin to dispel the insanity.
Yes, 12 humans have walked on the moon. They are not liars, but great Americans. A telescope orbiting the moon can see the landers and rovers left behind.
Dinosaurs not only existed, but they still exist. They’re just not as big as some of them used to be. The height of trees signifies less than the number of them and the amount of edible foliage they produce. Earth’s air was much more enriched in the vital trace gas CO2 during the Mesozoic than now. Hence vegetation could grow more lushly, and herbivores could grow to monstrous sizes.
It would not take humans tens of thousands of years to walk from Africa to Australia. Humans did not need ships to pass from SE Asia to Australia. If they couldn’t see the land of New Guinea or Australia from Indonesia, they could see the smoke of wildfires, so they knew that land lay across the water. Rafts or simple boats would have sufficed for the crossing.
It doesn’t matter how many of “you” have “discarded” “Darwinism”. The fact is that living things evolve. It’s a consequence of reproduction and the genetic system of all life on Earth.
Do you suppose that this dig, and so many like it every year for at least two centuries, have been faked?
Plus all those fossil digs from the Paleozoic, 541 to 252 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs.
“Why is much of Africa / the Middle East desert ?”
Because it is at a latitude where the air in the Hadley circulation is descending:
If anyone hasn’t read it yet, please read “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond. 70,000 years of human history where it becomes very clear that humans have grossly affected the environment, made extinct hundreds of species on different continents, and have been “imperialists” around the world since the establishment of agriculture, cities and states.
Wow… where do all these science deniers come from… the genome project has shown quite clearly how people moved around the planet… in several places large predators died out at about the same time as humans arrived and the question that is left hanging is: “did changing climate cause the demise of the predators and allow humans to move in” or “did the first small bands of humans cause continent wide die off”… The evidence is pointing in the direction that humans being adaptable capitalised on changing conditions but were not in themselves the cause of the massive die off. North America and Australia… lower sea levels allowed humans to cross to these continents without the need for navigation and sophisticated sailing vessels comes much later. Line of site, inquisitive minds and search for resources/food kept people moving.
I love when they trot out these stories, because they rather contradict the doomy prognostications of man-caused climate change. We darned sure weren’t taking fossil fueled vehicles and plane trips, using hair dryers and ice makers, washing machines and dryers, getting our food from thousands of miles away, etc and so on, back then.
They still believe the mammoth died out from climate change, and then get surprised when they find mammoth bones with spears in them.
Just in Wyoming alone:
http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/wyomingheritage/preHistoricSites.html
At the Colby site, atlatl-armed Clovis hunters killed mammoth in a narrow arroyo, then piled up the meat they couldn’t use immediately to form a frozen cache. “Buffalo jumps” were also a common hunting technique.
Other obvious hunting sites were around water sources, to ambush large game bogged down in water or mud. The well-designed Schöningen javelins from over 300 Ka were for instance found at an ancient lakeside.
We are not allowed in Australia to state that Aborigines killed off the mega fauna. The Aborigines are all environment friendly. And the Green leftists would all get upset and start frothing at the mouth.
So of course it was the drying out climate which did for them.
PC BS.
Nor is it the case that warmer always defeat nomads. Among cases in point are the Huns and Mongols.
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The Huns were decimated by malaria in the Po Valley.
A small remnant was able to return to Mongolia, which today has ~ 3 mil. Inhabitants and resumed life as a horse breeder.
The Mongolian heralds, degenerated into lyrics within a few generations, learned to use musical instruments and zen Buddhism. The remaining riders in their wake returned to Mongolia, breeding horses and shamanism.
https://www.google.at/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-browser&q=Mongolei+einwohner
Funny thing is that Thylacine and Thylacoleo never went extinct on the mainland. Of course scientist refuse to accept evidence from thousands of witnesses or trace evidence like unique footprints. There are at least 7 video’s that show an animal with the unique biometric signature of thylacine and these scientist are too egotistical to even consider looking.