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The Megafauna (meg-UH-fawn-UH) or "big animals" were the large animals that lived during the late Cenozoic Era after the extinction of the dinosaurs, mostly during the last Ice Age. They included animals such as the Woolly Mammoth, Columbian Mammoth, Smilodon, Woolly Rhino, and Megatherium, just to name a

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few. Most were very large and often hairy, having a long, thick, mammoth-like fur coat covering nearly their entire bodies to protect themselves from the cold. They were often quadropeds and herbivorous, however, some could stand on their hind legs, and some were fierce carnivores, the biggest mammalian ones in history. They also included reptiles such as Megalania and Titanoboa, and birds, like Titanis and the Giant Moa. They were so diverse that they lived on nearly every continent, including Australia and Antarctica. They all went extinct in the geological blink of an eye around 10,000 years ago for reasons not quite know. Some suspect it was either early man, which was about the time when they first started to appear in the fossil record when the Megafauna started to go extinct. Others say it was climate change, since they'd adapted to cold weather and the Ice Age started to end around that time. Still some say it was disease, possibly caused by humans spreading around the world and bringing disease the Megafauna weren't immune to. Most believe, though, that it was a combination of all three, since it's pretty unlikely a single one of those caused the extinction of so many animals at a time.

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