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Land of Monsters; What if the Aborigines never tamed it?
Topic Started: Jun 6 2010, 08:45 PM (2,243 Views)
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This concept isn't much "alternative evolution" as it is alternate history, but since it deals with an outcome of an incredibly different environment, I feel it could go here.

As is known, Australia used to have terrifying creatures roaming around about 40,000 years ago, such as (but not limited to) giant wombats, carnivorous kangaroos, land-dwelling crocodiles, and a bird that was bigger than the moa. However, it seems that when the Australian Aborigines rolled around to the island, bringing with them their "technique" of burning grasslands to clear space, most of the megafauna died out. By the time the British rolled in, few creatures got to be bigger than the Grey Kangaroo, or the emu.

So, I present an alternative: What if the Aborigines never arrived? What if Australia remained uninhabited by a permanent race, and the whites were the first people to ever settle there? What might happen to the biodiversity, and how might this have changed the face of modern science?
You may be a king or a lil' street sweeper, but sooner or later, you'll dance with the reaper!
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xaritscin
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maybe they would have vanished the most interesting predators, like the Thylacoleo and the Megalania, and killed the other for getting food. you dont need to be a genius to know how stupid was the people in that epoch.
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Ook
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i somewhere find that someone finds 300 years odl megalania bones,but i am not sure,maybe its fake
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The Dodo
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Probably fake or just from some other monitor lizard.
A few megafauna such as the giant rat kangaroo may survive but as penumbra espinosa said most would be killed off by the new settlers.
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We'd definitely know much more about them, though, and any extinction of theirs would be more recent.

Alternatively, some creatures might be preserved in zoos, or in museums. Imagine seeing an enormous stuffed Megalania in Australia's natural history museum!
You may be a king or a lil' street sweeper, but sooner or later, you'll dance with the reaper!
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Scrublord
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Even if the european settlers were the first people to arrive, the most the megafauna could probably hope for would be export to zoos, and even then, I doubt they's be able to breed them in captivity. Long story short--they'd be doomed either way.
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Ook
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maybe diprotodonts have same fate as american bisons or wisent...but i think that thylacine will survives
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xaritscin
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i really love marsupials but, honestly, its a bad idea to think that, humans can colonize a place without killing almost all the native animals living there. the only real thing i can think is that the most part of the megafauna would end like the Thylacines. with the last of them dying on a zoo
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Ook
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err,without dingo competition,thylacies will still ives in australia and maybe in new guinea,diprotodons could live at plains,but they can have same fate as bisons,but they can survives,other megafauna can survive too..just some species will be exterminated and some survived.
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MitchBeard
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I think you guys are a bit more skeptical of the ability for these animals to survive white man than you should be.
There might be a few extinctions, but I think Australia would still have a lot more megafauna that we do now.
Victims of the mass extinctions due to the drying climate and the arrival of the aborigines include amoung mammals include:
A larger species of Antichinus, six species of diprotodontidae, two species of giant rat kangaroo (the carnivorous kangaroos), 13 species of kangaroo along with another 19 species of short faced kangaroo, the marsupial tapir, a 16 kilogram koala, two species of giant echidna, the marsupial lion and 6 species of large or giant wombats.
Thats not including the handful of giant herbivorous bird species, Megalania, and the giant horned turtles Meiolania.
We wouldn't have lost thylacines or devils off the mainland when dingos were introduced either.
I think wiping all of these species in short enough a time period for conservation period of the harsh and expansive continent might be a feat that you all underestimate.
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Ook
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i agree with you,but remember passenger pigeons,bisons etc. ;)
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MitchBeard
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Oh sure, a few species will get wiped out no doubt. But all of them? I think not.
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Ook
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yeah,as you write,they are sceptical
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Rats. They'll invade Australia as well, along with rabbits. But maybe we aren't considering the convicts here.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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MitchBeard
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Oh we are. But they won't have much more impact that they already have.
Rodents showed up in Australia way before aborigines were.
And sure, rabbits have a massive impact on the landscape when they boom, but with more competition and with a few more predator still around when white man show up,
I don't think they would have much more effect on the megafauna than do they already today.
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