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| If we push the calendar back, there are some marvelous megafauna that are no longer with us. The causes of their losses are lost in time, but let me finish with an example. This southeast Asian rhinoceros (Baluchithere) was able to eat fruits the size of basketballs like you eat a grape. This is a life-size model in a museum in Oklahoma. Imagine the seeds that it could have dispersed, and the damage that it could have done to a forest. Its extinction is lost in time (about 50,000 years ago), but it is tempting to ask if people were already on the scene - while huge, its babies must have once been weak and small. Hmmm. | ||
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