Why there are no major predators in Australia

Our planet is a unique ecosystem, a house for an innumerable amount of amazing living beings and vegetation. Australia occupies a special place in a number of unusual places on Earth. After all, only there is a kangaroo. And in modern Australia there are no major predators. Why - let's try to figure it out.

As it usually happens, there is no consensus in the scientist of the world. According to the first theory, all major predators who could inhabit the continent were destroyed by the aborigines for the purpose of safety and prey for food. Why did this not happen in Africa or, for example, in Europe? The geographical position of Australia, its remoteness from other lands is the reason that new predatory views was just nowhere to take. Even the wild dog Dingo, another symbol of the Australian continent, was brought there by a man. So, 1.6 million years ago Australia inhabited the silence lions (Thylacoleo Carnifex), which disappeared 40-30 thousand years. Back simultaneously with the appearance of the first Aborigines.

The second theory says that the disappearance of a population of large predators contributed to a poor landscape, lack of places where animals could hide from a person.

Another version - climate change, which gradually became all land. Together with the lack of frequent and thick vegetation, it caused the extinction of huge animals, which could not adapt to such conditions. The forests, according to the paleontologist Tim Flannery, could be destroyed by a person who used fire for hunting.

Pretty much explanation, and most of them are somehow related to the activities of people. However, some researchers still associate the unenviable fate of large predators with their structure (sample) and low adaptive ability. As a result, the role of major predators of Australia took the reptiles.

Perhaps one day it will be known why the giant and dangerous animals of the continent disappeared - lions, snakes, lizards and poultry, but while it remains a mystery of Australia, which is reliably hidden in the depths of history.