Newsademic British English edition 260

4th February 2016 
Newsademic.com
™
 - British English edition 
page 
4
sides will not even sit in the same 
room. Instead they are taking part 
in proximity talks. The two groups 
are in different parts o f the building. 
UN officials move from one group 
to the other trying to find things that 
they agree on. These proximity talks 
are expected to last for at least six 
months. □
A
u s t r a l ia n
 
b ir d
 
e x t in c t io n
Genyornis newtoni
was a huge 
bird. It lived in Australia thousands 
o f years ago. The bird, which laid 
very large eggs, could not fly. R e­
searchers from the USA have been 
studying broken pieces o f ancient 
eggshell. Some have burn marks. 
The burnt eggshells probably mean 
that early humans cooked and ate 
the flightless bird’s eggs. This might 
explain why the birds died out.
C om puter g enerated im age o f w hat G enyornis
new toni m a y have lo o ke d like
The large birds were 2.1 metres 
(seven feet) tall. They were much 
bigger than today’s large flightless 
birds such as the emu and ostrich. 
The ancient birds had powerful 
legs, but very small wings. From 
the shape o f its beak, scientists 
think that 
Genyornis newtoni
was a 
plant-eater, or herbivore. The birds 
lived in many parts o f Australia. 
They seem to have liked grassland 
areas. Many shell fragments from 
their eggs have been found in sand
dunes. So the giant birds may have 
used these places to nest. The birds’ 
eggs were the size o f large melons.
Giant creatures were once com­
mon in Australia. Together they are 
known as megafauna. Many fossils 
o f these big animals have been dis­
covered in the country. They often 
look like very large versions o f ani­
mals that exist today. For example, 
fossils have been found o f giant 
wombats, kangaroos, koalas, liz­
ards, tortoises, and platypuses. The 
giant kangaroos were over three me­
tres (ten feet) tall.
M ost megafauna species are 
thought to have died out around 
50,000 years ago. Yet some sur­
vived for another ten thousand 
years. Nobody knows why all o f 
Australia’s megafauna became ex­
tinct. One idea is that early humans 
hunted these animals until none 
were left. Some scientists think 
that the more likely reason was ei­
ther a sudden or gradual change in 
the climate. Huge wildfires are not 
unusual in Australia. Lightning of­
ten starts these blazes. In Australia 
they are known as bushfires. Some 
suspect that wildfires may have 
helped, or contributed to, several 
megafauna extinctions.
Megafauna also existed in most 
other parts o f the world thousands o f 
years ago. They too died out. Today, 
Africa is the only part o f the world 
where many megafauna-like ani­
mals exist. Examples are: elephants, 
rhinos, giraffes, and hippos.
Modern humans 
(Homo sapiens)
originally came from Africa. They 
began to spread to parts o f the Middle 
East roughly 70,000 years ago. After 
crossing Asia they arrived in Aus­
tralia about 20,000 years later. This 
was around the time that the Austral­
ian megafauna began to disappear. 
These early humans did not grow
their own food. They travelled 
around hunting animals and gather­
ing edible fruit, nuts and berries. It 
would have been easy for them to col­
lect 
Genyornis new toni’s
large eggs.
Rock art picture o f Genyornis newtoni? (Ben Gunn)
The researchers studied pieces 
o f eggshell with burn marks. They 
were found at 200 places in different