section_path: Extinction/Dying out on the Australian mainland
section_name: Dying out on the Australian mainland
paragraph_text: Dying out on the Australian mainland
  
  Australia lost more than 90% of its megafauna around 50–40,000 years ago as part of the Quaternary extinction event, with the notable exceptions of several kangaroo and wombat species, emus, cassowaries, large goannas, and the thylacine. The extinctions included the even larger carnivore Thylacoleo carnifex (sometimes called the marsupial lion) which was only distantly related to the thylacine. A 2010 paper examining this issue showed that humans were likely to be one of the major factors in the extinction of many species in Australia although the authors of the research warned that one-factor explanations might be over-simplistic. The youngest radiocarbon dates of the thylacine in mainland Australia are around 3,500 years old, with an estimated extinction date around 3,200 years ago, synchronous with that of Tasmanian devil, and closely co-inciding with the earliest records of the dingo, as well as an intensification of human activity.
  
  A study proposes that the dingo may have led to the extinction of the thylacine in mainland Australia because the dingo outcompeted the thylacine in preying on the Tasmanian nativehen. The dingo is also more likely to hunt in packs than the more solitary thylacine. Examinations of dingo and thylacine skulls show that although the dingo had a weaker bite, its skull could resist greater stresses, allowing it to pull down larger prey than the thylacine. Because it was a hypercarnivore, the thylacine was less versatile in its diet than the omnivorous dingo. Their ranges appear to have overlapped because thylacine subfossil remains have been discovered near those of dingoes. Aside from wild dingoes, the adoption of the dingo as a hunting companion by the indigenous peoples would have put the thylacine under increased pressure.
  
  A 2013 study suggested that, while dingoes were a contributing factor to the thylacine's demise on the mainland, larger factors were the intense human population growth, technological advances, and the abrupt change in the climate during the period. A report published in the Journal of Biogeography detailed an investigation into the mitochondrial DNA and radio-carbon dating of thylacine bones. It concluded that the thylacine died out on mainland Australia in a relatively short time span.
  
  Ken Mulvaney has suggested, based on the high number of rock carvings of the thylacine on the Burrup Peninsula, Aboriginal Australians were aware of, and concerned about the thylacine’s dwindling numbers around that time.