Before humans roamed the earth, we had dinosaurs; not too long after the extinction of dinosaurs we had giant sabre-tooth tigers and big woolie mammoths, but did you know Australia had giant animals of our own?
While there are a number of large animals known to have walked all areas of the earth, Australia had some especially fluffy and interesting creatures.
These scientific name for these “fluffies” is mammals while the creatures with scales and feathers, we call megafauna.
In order to be classified as megafauna, an animal’s body mass needs to exceed 40 kilograms. While this sounds huge, there are still megafauna around today – think lions, elephants and giraffes.
Before elephants and lions, there were mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers which were eventually wiped out during the ice age around 50,000 years ago. But it wasn’t just mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers that were wiped out; there were close to 200 species of megafauna from thousands of years ago that disappeared around the time humans began roaming the earth.
Evrim joins Dr Sophie Calabretto to chat about the magnificent creatures that roamed the land before us and which of these creatures were native to Australia. Tune into the full episode of The Science Briefing below…