Past and Present

The loss of oolacunta (rat-kangaroo) was just one of the latest in a long series of extinction that have depleted Australia’s mammal diversity in the geologically recent past. One hundred thousand years ago there were at least 340 species of land mammals in Australia; 67 of them are now extinct. These extinctions came in three waves. First, some time in the last glacial cycle( the late Pleistocene, between 130000 and 10000 years ago), over 50 species of mainly very large marsupials disappeared. Next, in the Holocene (between 10 000 and 200 years ago), the remaining large carnivores declined to extinction on the mainland. Finally, in the two hundred years or so since European settlement a further ten marsupial species is now threatened with extinction.