More than 85 percent of Australia's big mammals, birds and reptiles went extinct "shortly" after our species appeared, a team of scientists reported in the journal Nature Communications. A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013 said Australia's giant animals were already mostly extinct by the time humans arrived -- and pointed the finger at climate change. This allowed the team to "look back in time" and reconstruct climate and ecosystem conditions up to 150,000 years ago. The team found no association between environmental change and megafauna extinction, or evidence that the animals suffering a slow demise as the area became drier. "These findings rule out climate change, and implicate humans as the primary extinction cause," the researchers concluded.

Source: The China Post January 21, 2017 00:03 UTC