“Giant kangaroos and wombats bigger than cars which once roamed Australia were killed by climate change and not human hunters,” Reuters reported this week.

According to a study released by Australian scientists, megafauna—giant kangaroos measuring eight feet tall, wombats as large as automobiles, and other enormous creatures—died not at the hands of Aboriginal hunters, as once believed, but by long-term drought.

Dr. Gregory Webb of Queensland University of Technology stated that Australia has been getting drier “for about the last half-million years.” His research with Dr. Gilbert Price in southeast Queensland has allegedly shown that “a steady warming of Australia’s climate” drove the animals to extinction.

Robb Taylor of Reuters adds: “Scientists have said that Australia must brace itself for long-term climate change and water shortages due to the accelerating pace of global warming.”

Global warming is hotly debated among scientists and politicians today, and not all scientists agree with Dr. Webb’s conclusions about the megafauna.

Dr. Larry Vardiman, an atmospheric scientist with the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, gives a different perspective on the research conducted in Queensland:

It is commonly believed by the conventional scientific community that dinosaurs and many other species died out during short-period catastrophic episodes during earth history over millions of years. One of the most frequently mentioned catastrophic episodes was the impact of asteroids some 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The Cretaceous Period was a warm, moist period of history during which dinosaurs flourished, followed by cooler, drier conditions. However, the end of the Cretaceous Period may not have been 65 million years ago as conventional scientists think.

When could this change have occurred? Dr. Vardiman continues:

It could have been only a few thousand years ago when the Bible says the earth was devastated by a global flood in the time of Noah. Before this event the earth was warm and moist. After the global flood, the earth went through a devastating ice age followed by a slow warming and major drying of the earth. It is likely that most of the dinosaurs were killed in the Flood and the few that were released from the Ark could not live in the changed climate conditions after the Flood.

How does one account for the vast differences in time calculations?

“The same information about the extinction of the dinosaurs,” Vardiman states, “can be explained from two different perspectives depending upon the assumptions of the scientist."

Interested in global warming? Read “Earth's Climate Thermostat” by Dr. Larry Vardiman.

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