Settlers eyed in Australia extinctions

CANBERRA, Australia - Australia's giant prehistoric animals, including 10-foot-tall kangaroos and wombat-like creatures as big as a rhinoceros, were likely wiped out by aboriginal settlers, not climate change, a researcher said Tuesday.

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The question of what killed Australia's so-called megafauna during the last Ice Age divides paleontologists.

The most popular theories are that climate change drove the giants to extinction more than 40,000 years ago or that Aborigines, who arrived in Australia as far back as 60,000 years ago, were responsible because of overhunting or burning the vegetation upon which the creatures fed.