Author: Sam Arman, Adjunct Associate, Palaeontology, Flinders University

The extinction of the megafauna – giant marsupials that lived in Australia until 60,000 to 45,000 years ago – is a topic of fierce debate. Some researchers have suggested a reliance on certain plants left some species susceptible to changes in climate. Our research, published today in Science, indicates that for short-faced kangaroos, which comprise the bulk of the extinct megafauna, their diets were broad and comparable to many long-faced kangaroos which survived the extinction event. Broad diets would have made short-faced kangaroos well adapted to the last ice age in Australia, bringing diet-based extinction scenarios into doubt. What was…