Zoology. large or giant animals, especially of a given area. Because megafauna tend to have long lives and slow population growth and recovery rates, many such species, as elephants and whales, are particularly vulnerable to overexploitation by humans.
Ecology. animals of a given area that can be seen with the unaided eye.
Classical Mythology. large or giant mythical creatures, often resembling a familiar animal, as a hellhound, or a composite of different animals, as a griffin.
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Seven of those layers, in the area Bennett and his colleagues recently excavated, held human tracks along with those of long-lost megafauna.
The combination of a weak magnetic field and this decrease in the sun’s output around the same time “created the perfect storm” of climate and broader environmental changes, placing a major stress on megafauna populations, Turney says.
Those factors may also have led to increased competition between megafauna and human populations, as well as with Neandertals, he says.
Numbers drove culture, culture increased numbers, accelerating cultural evolution, on and on, ultimately pushing human populations to outstrip their ecosystems, devastating the megafauna and forcing the evolution of farming.
Within a few thousand years of human arrival on Australia, all the continent's megafauna were hunted to extinction.