© Reuters
Scientists found the turtle leg bones, but not shells or skulls, which they said suggested humans helped drive the giant turtles to extinction.
Scientists found the turtle leg bones, but not shells or skulls, which they said suggested humans helped drive the giant turtles to extinction.
Researchers found the last example of supersize animals to roam the earth, a never-before-seen species in the genus Meiolania, were driven to extinction by settlers on an island of Vanuatu.
This was despite the turtles, which were more than eight feet in length, outliving most of the other outsized, extinct animals known as megafauna.
Experts believe most of the Australian megafauna species, such as the woolly mammoth, died almost 50,000 years ago although debate has raged over what exactly killed them.
But according to scientists at the University of New South Wales the giant turtles were alive when a people known as the Lapita arrived in the area about 3,000 year ago.
