pattern of shifting from big prey to small as the former were wiped out was characteristic of the new ex-Africans wherever they went. In Australia, almost all larger animal species, from diprotodons to giant kangaroos, became extinct soon after human beings arrived. In the Americas, human arrival coincided with a sudden extinction of the largest, slowest-breeding beasts. Much later in Madagascar and New Zealand mass extinctions of large animals also followed with human colonisation. (Incidentally, given the obsession of ‘show-off’ male hunters with catching the largest beasts with which to buy
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