Introductions...

So hello everyone! Now, as you may have guessed from the title, my blog is going to be based on the Late Pleistocene extinctions, specifically focusing on Australia. Now I know it’s not quite as exciting as dinosaurs, but giant kangaroos and wombats will be involved I promise! So can you imagine going back 50,000 years ago, the expansive lands of the earth filled with a diversity of mega fauna species from the sabre toothed cat, the giant ape and the woolly mammoth? No? Me neither. But 11,000 years ago, the biggest extinction of the Quaternary period occurred across the whole globe, most predominately in North America, South America and Australia. Over a period of 40,000 years, 53 mega fauna genera disappeared - that’s a lot, honest. Most of these extinctions happened around 11,000 years ago, during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch. So how did it happen? Well to be honest no one really knows… But there are various theories, the two favourite being environmental causes relating to climate change or as it usually is with everything, us humans, apparently we may have got a bit over excited and hunted certain species to their extinction.

A fierce looking sabre-toothed tiger, maybe a good job they’re not around today...

The debate regarding the Late Pleistocene extinction in Australia is still very active, with more studies focusing on specific paleontological evidence from different parts of Australia. Some of these studies I will be assessing later on in the blog, many of which point to the climate as the main reason for the massive loss in mega fauna. I will also go onto look at case studies based on specific Oceanic islands and maybe look at some of the many studies carried out in Northern America.

During this blog, I hope to not just consider the different academic articles in this blog deliberating this debate (in fear of boring you!), but also post videos and pictures that I think you might find interesting.

But anyway bye for now, I will be posting again soon!