Archaeologists say they may have finally solved one of Australian's biggest puzzles - how its giant prehistoric animals, collectively known as megafauna, were driven to extinction.
Researchers say that unlike previous theories, which blamed the continent's early human inhabitants for the animals' demise, it was climate change which eventually killed off the continent's giant flightless birds, three-metre-tall kangaroos and car-sized wombats.
Judith Field and Richard Fullager, from Sydney University, have found evidence that humans co-existed with the megafauna for at least 6,000 years.
The reason the giant animals died out about 36,000 years ago, they claim, was because Australia gradually became more arid and food sources more scarce.
'There is evidence to support the notion [that] climate change was the driving factor in the extinction of the megafauna,' Dr Field told a scientific conference this week.
Australia was once roamed by a bizarre collection of giant animals, from enormous emu-like birds to marsupial lions, giant wallabies and lizards, as well as the rhinoceros-like diprotodon, which weighed nearly three tonnes.
