728 Mammals (Late Quaternary), Extinctions of Australia Flannery and Roberts (cited in MacPhee, 1999) report that near the time of first contact (FC) Meganesia (Australasia) lost approximately 28 genera and 55 species of large vertebrates (body weights exceeding 10 kg) The more important extinct genera of mammals in the Australasian (Australia and New Guinea) extinct megafauna are all marsupials They include the extinct ‘‘lion’’ Thylacoleo; the wombats Phascolomys, Phascolonus, and Ramsaya; a Palorchestid, Palorchestes; four diprotodontidsFDiprotodon, Euwenia, Nototherium, and Zygomaturus; a potoroid, Propleopus; and five giant kangaroosFFissiuridon, Procoptodon, Protemnodon, Sthenurus and Troposodon In addition, there was an extinct giant flightless bird, the mihirung (Genyornis); a giant lizard, Megalania; an extinct horned turtle, Meiolania; and a giant python, Wonambi Although older, the pattern of extinction in Australia resembles that in the Americas and Madagascar In all three landmasses kill sites or processing sites are few, in dispute, or absent As elsewhere, the lack of kill or butchering sites has deterred many Australian archeologists and paleontologists from invoking an overkill Although no extinctions of Australian mammals less than 10 kg are known at FC, a sizable number of medium-size mammals are threatened or have vanished in historic time, presumably a side effect of European settlement in Australia (Flannery, 1994) Despite the problem in direct radiocarbon dating on extinct fauna, the absence of extinct species from well-dated Tasmanian archeological sites up to 25,000 years in age supports the view that the Australian LQEE was over by then The Franklin River region in Tasmania serves as an example As in other parts of eastern Australia, Tasmania once harbored a variety of extinct species of giant marsupials Although 21 dated late Pleistocene sites in caves or rock shelters in southwestern Tasmania ranging in age from 10,000 to at least 25,000 yr bp have yielded hundreds of thousands of animal bones, all are of living species and mainly of Bennett’s wallaby, Macropus rufogriseus (J Allen as cited in Kirsch and Hunt, 1997) If the extinct mihirung, giant macropods, diprotodonts, etc were still alive 25,000 years ago or later, it is difficult to believe that they would not be represented in such rich zooarcheological material This negative evidence supports the view that extinctions occurred earlier Until more fossil faunas are dated, there will be unavoidable uncertainty about when extinction occurred In this regard, new environmental information from stable isotopes from samples of Genyornis eggshell is especially promising The record to date indicates extinction of Genyornis by 45,000 yr bp in several parts of its wide range and in more than one climatic province; these findings argue against extinctions driven by some climatic bottleneck (Miller et al., 1999) In Australia extinctions long predate any hypothetical late glacial climatic forcing Finally, in terms of human origins, a comparison between Australia and America is instructive In the New World archeologists have seen a variety of sites claimed to be 13,000–22,000 years or older fail to be verified or locally replicated, despite regular assertions of their proponents In contrast, in the past two decades dozens of Australian sites have repeatedly yielded geochemical dates indicating dozens of sites older than Clovis in North America Given the smaller area of Australia compared with that of the New World, its much less productive soils and much more variable precipitation (Flannery, 1994), and the much smaller number of archeologists, geologists, paleontologists, and amateurs searching for artifacts and fossils, the abundance of sites 10,000–40,000 years old and older in Australia, compared with the half a dozen claims of pre-Clovis sites in the New World and their debatable status, is a red flag to environmentalists Unless proposed early sites in the Americas are critically replicated by the geoarcheological community at large, as in Australia, the claims for a pre-Clovis occupation and a pre-Clovis culture, no matter how detailed or how often repeated, remain in limbo (Martin and Steadman, 1999) Madagascar Within the past two millennia, at a time when no other continents suffered appreciable extinctions of large mammals (Martin and Klein, 1984), Madagascar lost many large mammals, including 20 species of lemurs up to the size of a gorilla All are larger than the largest living lemurs In addition, Madagascar lost two hippos; the highly endemic anteater known as bibymalagasy (Plesiorycteropus), recently assigned to its own order; a large (bobcat-size) species of carnivore (Cryptoprocta spelea); a rabbit-size rodent (Hypogeomys australis); two genera of giant flightless birds; and two giant tortoises, one exceeding 100 kg in mass (MacPhee and Marx as cited in Goodmans and Patterson, 1997) Although most if not all of these extinctions in Madagascar coincide with human colonization, none have been found in well-defined kill sites, leading MacPhee and Marx to model hyperdisease They generalize their model to include all lands of prehistoric human colonization Despite its implausibility, the model invites testing since the fossil record has yet to reveal how LQEE occurred In the Americas the lack of many Clovis kill sites may be overcome by modeling ‘‘blitzkrieg,’’ a rapid elimination of preferred prey, leaving minimal field evidence, by a potent human predator (Martin, 1990) If aridification contributed to extinctions in Madagascar, it was evidently a potential problem only in the southwest Sudden overkill by a ‘‘blitz,’’ a sweep of the vulnerable megafauna, seems unlikely if the start-up of colonization took more than 1000 years Robert Dewar (as cited in Goodman and Patterson, 1997) suggested that the impact of wild cattle on the native fauna rather than human hunting forced the extinctions All this may be resolved eventually by enrichment of the stratigraphic and geochronological record, including a major effort at extending the radiocarbon chronology of the extinct Malagasy megafauna into glacial times to determine if late glacial climatic change forced extinctions long in advance of human presence Radiocarbon dates of 13,000 and 26,000 yr bp on a large (B70- kg) extinct lemur, Megaladapis (Simons as cited in Goodman and Patterson, 1997), indicate that glacialage faunas exist Apart from Megaladapis, virtually nothing is known of the glacial-age faunas of Madagascar Like other extinct genera, Megaladapis survived until the end of the Holocene and may have been known historically Unlike Madagascar, rich glacial-age faunas are known in New Zealand, Tonga, and Hawaii To date, no glacial-age extinctions have been detected in these islands, strengthening