A Protemnodon skull from a cave at Mt. Cripps, northwest Tasmania.
Credit: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmania, Australia
He added that because the large animals were slow breeders, it would not have required an aggressive campaign to see them quickly die out.
"A lot of people still have in their minds an axe-wielding, spear-wielding people, bloodthirsty, out there slaughtering all over the place – it wasn't like that at all," he said. "It was basically just one joey [baby kangaroo] in the pot for Christmas. And that's all you have to do to drive slow-breeding species to extinction."
"Speculative fantasy"
The findings of the latest study has already been contested, however. The idea that humans killed the giant creatures was "in the realms of speculative fantasy," Judith Field a University of Sydney palaeontologist told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"Humans cannot even be placed at the scene," she said.
"Until someone can explain [our results] by anything other than human arrival and human presence we're getting an increasingly strong case," countered Flannery.
An earlier study by Flannery and Roberts showed that 90 per cent of Australia's mainland megafauna was extinct by 46,000 years ago when humans first colonised the landmass.
with AFP
