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Australia's Lost Giants

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60 views6 pages

Australia's Lost Giants

Uploaded by

Pegasus
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© © All Rights Reserved
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You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 26-38, which are based on the

Reading Passage below.

Australia's Lost Giants


What happened to Australia's megafauna, the giant animals that once existed across
this enormous continent?

A In 1969, a fossil hunter named Rod Wells came to Naracoorte in South Australia to
explore what was then known as Victoria Cave. Wells clawed through narrow
passages, and eventually into a huge chamber. Its floor of red soil was littered with
strange objects. It took Wells a moment to realize what he was looking at: the bones
of thousands of creatures that must have fallen through holes in the ground above
and become trapped. Some of the oldest belonged to mammals far larger than any
found today in Australia. They were the ancient Australian megafauna - huge
animals of the Pleistocene epoch. In boneyards across the continent, scientists have
found the fossils of a giant snake, a huge flightless bird, and a seven foot kangaroo,
to name but a few. Given how much ink has been spilled on the extinction of the
dinosaurs, it's a wonder that even more hasn't been devoted to megafauna.
Prehistoric humans never threw spears at Tyrannosaurus rex but really did hunt
mammoths and mastodons.

B The disappearance of megafauna in America - mammoths, saber-toothed cats,


giant sloths, among others - happened relatively soon after the arrival of human
beings, about 13,000 years ago. In the 1960s, paleoecologist Paul Martin developed
what became known as the blitzkrieg hypothesis. Modern humans, Martin said,
created havoc as they spread through the Americas, wielding spears to annihilate
animals that had never faced a technological predator. But this period of extinction
wasn't comprehensive. North America kept its deer, black bears and a small type of
bison, and South America its jaguars and llamas.
C What happened to Australia's large animals is baffling. For years scientists blamed
the extinctions on climate change. Indeed, Australia has been drying out for over a
million years, and the megafauna were faced with a continent where vegetation
began to disappear. Australian paleontologist Tim Flannery suggests that people,
who arrived on the continent around 50,000 years ago, used fire to hunt, which led to
deforestation. Something dramatic happened to Australia's dominant land creatures -
somewhere around 46,000 years ago, strikingly soon after the invasion of a
tool-wielding, highly intelligent predator. In Flannery's 1994 book called The Future
Eaters, he sets out his thesis that human beings are a new kind of animal on the
planet, and are in general, one prone to ruining ecosystems. Flannery's book proved
highly controversial. Some viewed it as critical of the Aborigines, who pride
themselves on living in harmony with nature. The more basic problem with
Flannery's thesis is that there is no direct evidence that they killed any Australian
megafauna. It would be helpful if someone uncovered a Diprotodon skeleton with a
spear point embedded in a rib - or perhaps Thylacoleo bones next to the charcoal of
a human campfire. Such kill sites have been found in the Americas but not in
Australia.

D The debate about megafauna pivots to a great degree on the techniques for dating
old bones and the sediments in which they are buried. If scientists can show that the
megafauna died out fairly quickly and that this extinction event happened within a
few hundred, or even a couple thousand years, of the arrival of people, that's a
strong case - even if a purely circumstantial one - that the one thing was the direct
result of the other. As it happens, there is one place where there may be such
evidence: Cuddie Springs in New South Wales. Today the person most vocal about
the site is archeologist Judith Field. In 1991, she discovered megafauna bones
directly adjacent to stone tools - a headlinemaking find. She says there are two
layers showing the association, one about 30,000 years old, the other 35,000 years
old. If that dating is accurate, it would mean humans and megafauna coexisted in
Australia for something like 20,000 years. "What Cuddie Springs demonstrates is
that you have an extended overlap of humans and megafauna," Field says.
Nonsense, say her critics. They say the fossils have been moved from their original
resting places and redeposited in younger sediments.

E Another famous boneyard in the same region is a place called Wellington Caves,
where Diprotodon, the largest known marsupial - an animal which carries its young in
a pouch like kangaroos and koalas - was first discovered. Scientist Mike Augee says
that: "This is a sacred site in Australian paleontology." Here's why: In 1830 a local
official named George Rankin lowered himself into the cave on a rope tied to a
protrusion in the cave wall. The protrusion turned out to be a bone. A surveyor
named Thomas Mitchell arrived later that year, explored the caves in the area, and
shipped fossils off to Richard Owen, the British paleontologist who later gained fame
for revealing the existence of dinosaurs. Owen recognized that the Wellington cave
bones belonged to an extinct marsupial. Later, between 1909 and 1915 sediments in
Mammoth Cave that contained fossils were hauled out and examined in a chaotic
manner that no scientist today would approve. Still, one bone in particular has drawn
extensive attention: a femur with a cut in it, possibly left there by a sharp tool.

F Unfortunately, the Earth preserves its history haphazardly. Bones disintegrate, the
land erodes, the climate changes, forests come and go, rivers change their course -
and history, if not destroyed, is steadily concealed. By necessity, narratives are
constructed from limited data. Australia's first people expressed themselves in rock
art. Paleontologist Peter Murray has studied a rock painting in far northern Australia
that shows what looks very much like a megafauna marsupial known as
Palorchestes. In Western Australia another site shows what appears to be a hunter
with either a marsupial lion or a Tasmanian tiger - a major distinction, since the
marsupial lion went extinct and the much smaller Tasmanian tiger survived into the
more recent historical era. But as Murray says, "Every step of the way involves
interpretation. The data doesn't just speak for itself."
Questions 26-30
The text above has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraphs contain the following information?
Every question has only one answer but you may use any of the letters A-F for more
than one question.
Circle the correct letters in your answer sheet.

26 descriptions of naturally occurring events that make the past hard to trace
27 an account of the discovery of a particular animal which had died out
28 the reason why a variety of animals all died in the same small area
29 the suggestion that a procedure to uncover fossilised secrets was inappropriate
30 examples of the kinds of animals that did not die out as a result of hunting

Questions 31-32
For questions 31-32 choose the correct answer A, B or C.
Circle the correct letter in your answer sheet.

31 Judith Field claims that


A she made a great discovery in 1991.
B she found fossil remains of giant animals in layers of sediments very close to those
which had stone tools in them.
C she was most vocal about Cuddie Springs in South New Wales as an important
archeological site.

32 Judith Field's opponents claim that


A the fossils of some younger animals were found in Cuddie Springs.
B there was long co-existence of humans and megafauna.
C the layers where fossils were found had been displaced
Question 33
Which TWO of these possible reasons for Australian megafauna extinction are
mentioned in the text?
Choose TWO letters from A-E for question 33.

A human activity
B disease
C loss of habitat
D a drop in temperature
E the introduction of new animal species

Question 34
The list below shows possible forms of proof for humans having contact with
Australian megafauna.
Which TWO possible forms of proof does the writer say have been found in
Australia?
Choose TWO letters from A-E for question 34.

A bone injury caused by a man-made object


B bones near to early types of weapons
C man-made holes designed for trapping animals
D preserved images of megafauna species
E animal remains at camp fires

Questions 35-38
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the text?
Circle
TRUE if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
FALSE if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
35 There is sufficient evidence to support Tim Flannery's ideas about megafauna
extinction.
36 There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas.
37 There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas.
38 There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas.

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