Australian megafauna

[2] Many modern researchers, including Tim Flannery, think that with the arrival of early Aboriginal Australians (around 70,000~65,000 years ago), hunting and the use of fire to manage their environment may have contributed to the extinction of the megafauna.

[4] New evidence based on accurate optically stimulated luminescence and uranium-thorium dating of megafaunal remains suggests that humans were the ultimate cause of the extinction for some of the megafauna in Australia.

[5] The dates derived have been interpreted as suggesting that the main mechanism for extinction was human burning of a landscape that was then much less fire-adapted; oxygen and carbon isotopes of teeth indicate sudden, drastic, non-climate-related changes in vegetation and in the diet of surviving marsupial species.

However, early Aboriginal peoples appear to have rapidly eliminated the megafauna of Tasmania about 41,000 years ago (following formation of a land bridge to Australia about 43,000 years ago as Ice Age sea levels declined) without using fire to modify the environment there,[7][8][9] implying that at least in this case hunting was the most important factor.

[7] This idea is supported by sediment cores from Lynch's Crater in Queensland, which suggest that fire increased in the local ecosystem about a century after the disappearance of Sporormiella (a fungus found in herbivorous animal dung used as a megafaunal proxy), leading to a subsequent transition to fire-tolerant sclerophyll vegetation.

[20] One of the most important advocates of human role, Tim Flannery, author of the book Future Eaters, was also heavily criticised for his conclusions.

One time, the gum trees were destroyed, forcing the Kadimakara to remain on the ground, particularly Lake Eyre and Kalamurina, until they died.

[40] In times of drought and flood, the Diyari performed corroborees (including dances and blood sacrifices) at the bones of the Kadimakara to appease them and request that they intercede with the spirits of rain and clouds.

[40] Geologist Michael Welland describes from across Australia Dreamtime "tales of giant creatures that roamed the lush landscape until aridity came and they finally perished in the desiccated marshes of Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre", giving as examples the Kadimakara of Lake Eye, as well as continent-wide stories of the Rainbow Serpent, which he says corresponds with Wonambi naracoortensis.

[41] Journalist Peter Hancock speculates in The Crocodile That Wasn't that a Dreamtime story from the Perth area could be a memory of Varanus priscus.