Thylacines, Dingoes, and People

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The peopling of Greater Australia at about 65,000 years ago preceded that of Eurasia and differed in several key aspects. First, there were no other hominins in Australia, though modern humans moving into Eurasia encountered Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly relict populations of other hominins. Second, the predatory guild in Australia was less diverse and physically smaller than that in Eurasia and the competition pressure was probably less severe. The largest Australian predator was the marsupial lion, Thylacoleo, while the most common medium-large predator was probably the thylacine. Human have been implicated in the extinction of both these indigenous species. Third, unlike modern humans moving into Eurasia, the First Australians did not bring dogs or partly domesticated wolves with them because their departure from other populations of modern humans preceded the appearance of dogs or Paleolithic wolfdogs. The placental dingo arrived in Australia only about 5,000 years ago and was not driven to extinction by humans, despite having adaptations similar to those of thylacines. Did competition with dingoes contribute to thylacine extinction? Why did dingoes form a cooperative relationship with humans rather than a competitive one?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22812