The Killers of Oz

[Colin McHenry <cmchenry@westserv.net.au>]

Because Steve is no doubt too modest to tell us himself, this article was 
spotted in the Sydney Morning Herald today.  The associated Proc. Roy. Soc. 
paper apparently came out yesterday.

Cheers
Colin

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Killers in our midst millennia ago
By Deborah Smith, Science Editor
April 28, 2004

URL: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/27/1082831569778.html

The online edition of The Sydney Morning Herald brings you updated local and 
world news, sports results, entertainment news and reviews and the latest 
technology information.

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It was a simple, compelling idea: that Australia's poor soil led to a 
stunting of the size and diversity of our ancient animals.

But the influential theory, popularised by Tim Flannery in his 1994 best 
seller, The Future Eaters, is wrong, Sydney researchers say.

By comparing our continent with South America during the past 25 million 
years, a team led by Stephen Wroe, of the University of Sydney, has 
shown Australia had more than its fair share of big, fierce, meat-eating 
mammals, given its size and isolation.

"A generation of students have been misinformed. Australians should no 
longer be taught that theirs is a biologically stunted land that 
produced a diminished fauna," Dr Wroe said.

Killer mammals had been rare on all continents, with only 45 big kinds 
existing on the planet during the past 65,000 years, he said.

"But more than 10 per cent of them were furry, sharp-toothed 
Australians, despite Australia only taking up about 6 per cent of the 
world's land surface area."

The carnivores that called Australia home millennia ago included six 
species of killer kangaroo, 13 kinds of thylacine and eight species of 
marsupial "lions".

The study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, 
concluded that Australia's small size and long isolation were the main 
forces that shaped the evolution of its unique creatures.

Dr Wroe said Dr Flannery's idea about the overriding importance of poor 
soil quality was appealing. "But it has never really been backed up by 
hard science." This was partly because the idea was hard to test.

Dr Flannery, director of the South Australian Museum, said the study 
provided "interesting new information" but had not tackled the question 
of soil quality in South America. "It seems a bit short."

His mind had not been changed, he said, but debate was the way science 
advanced. "The worse outcome is that your theory gets ignored, because 
then you have contributed nothing."

The Sydney team made use of a "great natural experiment" - the fact 
that, before South America crashed into North America 3 million years 
ago, it had been like Australia for tens of millions of years - an 
isolated island populated by strange marsupials.

The team found that the diversity and size of meat-eaters were similar 
in the southern continents for 22 million years before South America was 
no longer isolated.

--
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Colin McHenry
School of Environmental and Life Sciences (Geology)
University of Newcastle
Callaghan NSW 2308
Tel: +61 2 4921 5404
Fax: + 61 2 4921 6925

******************
Colin McHenry & Sarah Johnston
14 Summer Place
Merewether Heights  NSW 2291
+61 2 4963 2340
mob: 0423 081683

cmchenry@westserv.net.au
Colin.Mchenry@newcastle.edu.au