By Andrew Masterson | Cosmos
In a couple of hundred years the largest animal walking on land may well be a cow, new modelling predicts.
A paper published in the journal Science uncovers for the first time a startling correlation between human migration and the extinction of large animals.
The link between the loss of big creatures and the spread of Homo sapiens and other hominin species was well established by the time humans left Africa around 125,000 years ago, researchers led by biologist Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico, US, found.
With no indication that the trend is abating, the team predicts that all currently endangered large terrestrial species will pass within the next couple of centuries, leaving cows, at an average weight of 900 kilograms, the biggest things left.
