Here, mankind and death coincide,
But everyone’s still mystified …
Geologists find
This thunder bird’s kind
Were lost as Australia dried.
_________________________________________________________
Further reading:
Hydrological transformation coincided with megafaunal extinction in central Australia, Cohen et al. (2015) Geology
Drying lakes linked to extinctions, Nature
This is one in a series of poems written by Katherine Allen, a researcher in geochemistry and paleoclimate at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University.
