Extinct Australian Megafauna What Animals are Extinct in Australia?

Extinction means that a living creature disappears from our planet forever! Extinction is a natural evolutionary process; however, humans have accelerated it significantly. To demonstrate the impact of humans on extinction, we have classified animal extinctions below as Prehistoric (before humans), Early Human (Aborigines), and After European Settlement (European settlement). You can read more about extinction here.

Dromornis stirtoni

Also known as the Stilton's Thunder Bird, it was over 3m tall and weighed over 650kg. It was probably the largest, tallest, and heaviest bird that ever existed. They lived in subtropical open woodland until about 15 million years ago.

Genyornis newtoni

This bird was the last of the huge thunder birds. It was over 2m tall and weighed over 250kg. Its eggs weighed 1.6kg. These herbivorous birds lived in open forest and savannah-grasslands to as recent as 50,000 years ago, suggesting the native aboriginal people may have hunted them.

Megalania

The Megalania (Varanus priscus) was a giant monitor lizard with toxin-secreting oral glands. It lived from about 2 million years ago to as recently as 23,000 years ago. It was the largest land lizard that ever existed being 7m long and weighing over 1,950kg. It may have been hunted to extinction by humans.

Diprotodon

The diprotodon was the largest marsupial ever to exist. It resembled a giant wombat and was 3m long, 2m tall, and weighed 2,780 kg. It became extinct shortly after humans arrived in Australia.

Giant Echidna

Zaglossus hacketti was a long-beaked echidna that was about 1m in length, 0.6m tall, and weighed 30kg. It was the largest monotreme known to have ever lived. Given its size, it probably didn't burrow and hide like modern-day echidnas and was probably hunted to extinction by early humans.

Marsupial Lion

Thylacoleo carnifex, or a marsupial lion, was the largest carnivorous marsupial mammal that ever lived. It weighed about 130kgs, was 71cm tall, and was about 114cm in length. It had strong forelimbs, with enormous retractable, cat-like claws, a characteristic not found in other marsupials. Its long muscular tail was similar to that of a kangaroo. Humans were probably responsible for its extinction.

Propleopus

The propleopus oscillans was probably omnivorous, stood two metres high, and may have weighed about 70kg. It had teeth suitable for shearing meat. Whether it scavenged or hunted is not known.

What is Extinction What does 'Extinct' Mean?

Photo: Extinct Dinosaur

Extinction is the total disappearance of a living thing (plant or animal) from the planet. Forever! A clear example of extinction is the dinosaurs. They disappeared from the face of the Earth 65 million years ago.

Extinction is an ongoing process of evolution. Over time, all species of living things our planet eventually become extinct and are usually replaced by some other species. It is estimated that over 90% of all species of animals that ever lived since life began on the Earth are now extinct. This is a fundamental process of evolution.

However, in recent times, humans have accelerated the extinction process and caused non-replacing extinction.

Once they are gone, they are gone forever. That is extinction or to be extinct.

Types of Extinction Natural, Cataclysmic, Human Induced Extinction

There are three types of extinction. Those that occur naturally as a part of evolution. Those that are caused by some cataclysmic event such as a meteor striking the earth, and human-induced extinction.

Cataclysmic or Mass Extinctions

During the history of the earth, there have been five mass extinctions, brought about by some catastrophic event such as the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs. These events are very rare. In-between these large-scale extinction events, there have been slow, inevitable natural extinctions of species.

Normal or Background Extinction

Ignoring periods of mass extinction, so as not to distort their estimates, scientists use fossil records to determine the number of distinct species existed in any given time and place, and then to identify which ones became extinct. By using these numbers, they can determine the rate at which extinctions usually take place. This is referred to as background extinction, or the normal extinction rate and is defines at the naturally occurring rate of extinction through time. This measure is used to differentiate the rates of extinction, which occur naturally from those caused by the impact of humans on the earth’s ecosystem.

Human Induced Extinction

Photo: Tasmanian Tiger became extinct in 100 years

In recent times, due to human activities, the number of species becoming extinct has accelerated at an alarming rate. Some species have become extinct in just a few years. For example, since European settlement in Australia in 1788, about 100 animals are known to have gone extinct. That is approximately 1 every 2 years!

For example, the Tasmanian tiger became extinct in just 100 years after Europen settlement. Similarly, in America, the passenger pigeon, which once numbered in the hundred of millions, became extinct in less than a hundred years because of indiscriminate hunting by European settlers.

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