Discovery: Ancient turtles 'driven to extinction by humans'

An ancient species of giant turtle was driven to extinction by humans in the Pacific almost 3,000 years ago, scientists have discovered. 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.

They found the turtle leg bones, but not shells or skulls, which they said suggested humans helped drive the giant turtles to extinction. The bones, discovered in a graveyard on a site on the island of Efate that was known to be home to a Lapita settlement, date about 300 years after humans' arrival. The majority of the bones, found above an even older human graveyard, were from the creatures' legs, which was their fleshy and edible part.

The scientists, reporting Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), concluded this was proof that the turtles were hunted by humans to extinction for their meat.

"It is the first time this family of turtles has been shown to have met with humans and there are many turtle bones in the middens," said Dr Trevor Worthy, from the UNSW.

"People arrived on Vanuatu 3100 years ago and the village middens, which are the rubbish dumps that provided these bones, date to 2800 years ago,"

"So there's essentially a 300-year gap between those first human arrivals and the end of these turtles in these middens."

Dr Arthur Georges, an expert on the evolution of turtles at the University of Canberra, added: "This is a remarkable find, and adds the horned tortoises to the list of charismatic megafauna that has gone extinct in Australasia and the Pacific during the Holocene."


/Telegraph.co.uk/