h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maybe you should also mention that there untill recently existed a lemur that was the size of a gorilla. It seems quite impressive to me.

And no prizes for guessing why it's thought they're all gone now...

Big things that have never known predators make remarkably easy prey for marauding apes who run about on two legs.

Hmmm, that wouldn't fit with the timescales methinks.

If only it were so...

the evidence we have for the existance of the mighty extinct lemurs (like Archaeoindris which is your gorilla sized one)comes from subfossil remains. They've not been dead for a long enough time to become proper fossils. These beasties were wandering around Madagascar as little as 1500 years ago... which is when we turned up.

Our crimes are not only revealed by the timings, other evidence (which i can't quite lay my hands on at the mo...) exists which points the finger of blame firmly in our direction. There is a book by a chap called R.E. Dewar called "Extinction in Madagascar: the loss of the subfossil fauna" which disusses this (or so I am told, I've never read it... i just pulled the reference out of a Primatology textbook. It's pretty much established that it was our fault)

Sorry if I sounded a bit angry in my last post... it was late, and the "human mass extinction event" is a bit of sore point of mine...

rik

Yeah, it does make you feel rather guilty. But I think any predator with as wide eating habits as ours would have done the same if introduced on the island.