On This DayAustralia
Wednesday, 01 October 2008 (25/2008)Miniature Sheet: Stamp Collecting Month: Megafauna - Miniature Sheet
This issue focuses on Australia's megafauna - an extraordinary range of giant creatures that roamed the Australian continent many thousands and even millions of years ago and became extinct between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago (with the exception of the Tasmanian Tiger). Many of these animals, including
the marsupial lion and the large kangaroo, briefly co-existed with humans - a fact, some scientists hypothesise, that may have contributed to their extinction. Others hypothesise that climate change may have caused their extinction, although this argument does not account for the fact that megafaunal species survived two million years of climatic oscillations, including a number of arid glacial periods, before their sudden extinction.copyright notice: This material has been reproduced with permission of the Australian Postal Corporation. The original work is held in the National Philatelic Collection. |