Dr Chris Johnson is a Reader in the School of Tropical Biology at James Cook University

• Preface and Acknowledgments; Glossary; 1. Introduction - a brief history of Australian mammals; Part I. Mammals and People in Ice-Age Australia - 2.6 Million to 10,000 Years Ago: 2. The Pleistocene Megafauna; 3. What caused the Megafauna extinctions? 150 years of debate; 4. Two dating problems - human arrival and Megafauna extinction; 5. The changing environment of Late Pleistocene Australia; 6. Testing hypotheses on Megafauna extinction; 7. The aftermath: ecology consequences of Megafauna extinction; Part II. The Late Pre-Historic Period - 10,000 to 200 Years Ago; 8. Environmental change and human history in aboriginal Australia; 9. Dingoes, people, and other mammals in Holocene Australia; Part III. Europeans and Their New Mammals - The Last 200 Years; 10. Mammal extinction in European Australia; 11. What caused the recent extinctions?; 12 Interaction: rabbits, sheep and dingoes; 13. Conclusions - the history in review.

'This book makes a very well argued case for patterns and causes of mammal extinctions in Australia from the late Pleistocene into the period of European occupation. It gives an impressive range of evidence - palaeontological, palaeoenvironmental, archaeological, historical, ecological - to make the case. I thoroughly recommend it.' Bruno David, Monash University