Megafauna

About Megafauna: 

• This term is generally used to describe animals weighing more than 50 kg.
• The term was first used by the English naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace in his 1876 book, The Geographical Distribution of Animals.
• Megafauna may be classified based on their dietary type as megaherbivores (plant-eaters), megacarnivores (meat-eaters), and megaomnivores (who eat both plants and meat).
  • Ostriches are megaomnivores, with an adult ostrich weighing anywhere between 90 and 140 kg, with height between seven and nine feet.
• Historical evidence of Megafauna
  • The earliest documented evidence of the species in the subcontinent was presented by Richard Lydekker in 1884 in the Dhok Pathan deposits in Upper Siwalik (Sivalik) Hills in present-day Pakistan.
  • Archaeologist S A Sali in 1989 reported the discovery of ostrich eggshell beads and engraved pieces (dating back to roughly 50,000–40,000 years ago) in an Upper Palaeolithic open-air camping site at Patne, Maharashtra.
  • In 2017, researchers at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad assessed the ages of a batch of fossilised egg shells from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, and established the presence of ostriches 25,000 years ago. 

Q1: What is the Shiwalik Range?

Shivalik Hills are a sub-Himalayan Mountain Range running 1,600 km long from the Teesta River, Sikkim, through Nepal and India, into northern Pakistan.

Source: What discovery of prehistoric ostrich shells in Andhra means