How to Use megafauna in a Sentence

megafauna

noun
Definition of megafaunanext
  • Only about 40 of the megafauna, the biggest of the big, died out at the end of the Ice Age.
    — Dennis Pillion | Dpillion@al.com, al, 14 Dec. 2021
  • Over the course of evolution, immense megafauna have roamed the lands or swum in the seas.
    — Jeffrey M. Rodgers, Scientific American, 29 Sep. 2022
  • The most recent dry spell was around 1,500 years ago—around the time when all the megafauna species went extinct.
    — Rasha Aridi, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Oct. 2020
  • Best to take the play’s cue and focus less on the people and more on the charismatic megafauna.
    — Vulture, 30 Mar. 2023
  • The widespread megafauna of the late Pleistocene did not simply drop dead in unison.
    — Brian Switek, WIRED, 14 Mar. 2011
  • So why was the role of humans in the demise of the Australian megafauna so heavily debated over the years?
    — Fox News, 6 Dec. 2019
  • New Zealand is a perfect place to study the effects of megafauna on their landscape.
    — Jacob Mikanowski, The Atlantic, 19 Dec. 2017
  • In fact, the last stand of these megafauna took place in a unique Arctic ecosystem that doesn't exist today.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 30 Oct. 2021
  • The Earth has long been home to startlingly massive megafauna.
    — Daisy Hernandez, Popular Mechanics, 9 July 2020
  • But there were also megafauna that went extinct at the end of the ice age, like mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats and giant ground sloths.
    — Denise Su, The Conversation, 27 June 2022
  • In fact, White Sands has the highest concentration of megafauna tracks in the United States.
    — Hayden Carpenter, Outside Online, 3 July 2018
  • If there’s one person who may be able to lure the charismatic megafauna, it’s Karen Pierce, the British ambassador.
    — New York Times, 18 June 2021
  • Yet things are looking up for this most charismatic of megafauna.
    — The Economist, 16 Sep. 2017
  • Here in Alaska, foxes seem to get overlooked among the charismatic megafauna that tourists come to see.
    — David James, Anchorage Daily News, 23 Feb. 2020
  • Those stressors, coupled with megadroughts, brought about the end of Madagascar’s megafauna.
    — Rasha Aridi, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Oct. 2020
  • In a village just outside Kafue, Gertrude Mwiba is one of those trying to rub along with the local megafauna.
    — The Economist, 8 Aug. 2019
  • Across the Arctic, the warming climate is melting tens of thousands of years of permafrost, and long-dead megafauna are emerging.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 14 Sep. 2020
  • The main debate is whether the paintings at La Lindosa depict long-extinct megafauna.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 13 Oct. 2022
  • Japanese, mostly—to gather in public places and team up to make quick work of the megafauna that roam its bucolic scenes.
    — Simon Parkin, Ars Technica, 26 June 2017
  • Extinct megafauna like the mammoth and ground sloth weren’t just hapless prey or passive victims of climate change.
    — Jacob Mikanowski, The Atlantic, 19 Dec. 2017
  • Serengeti for the vast herds of bison and elk and the constellations of other charismatic megafauna that inhabit the park.
    — Frederick Reimers, Outside Online, 4 Nov. 2019
  • But tens of thousands of years after these megafauna did their digging, those tunnels still dot this part of South America.
    — Andrew Moseman, Popular Mechanics, 30 Mar. 2017
  • In the most recent study, the team writes that various depictions on the rock art of La Lindosa could portray long-extinct Ice Age megafauna.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 13 Oct. 2022
  • The females are famously protective of their young, and the species as a whole is widely regarded as the most dangerous of all the large African megafauna.
    — Travis Hall, Field & Stream, 12 Oct. 2023
  • Millions of dollars pour into the state in large part because people want to see the nation's last wild charismatic megafauna.
    — Author: Sean McGuire, Alaska Dispatch News, 14 Sep. 2017
  • There was an upside, though: Room for new species meant that other megafauna came into existence.
    — Erin Blakemore, Smithsonian, 28 June 2017
  • But where the planet had rocketed out of ice ages before and the megafauna had kept up, now an unprecedented actor stepped on the landscape.
    — Peter Brannen, The Atlantic, 22 June 2022
  • In the Southern foodscape, barbecue and chess pie and fried chicken are akin to what in ecology are known as charismatic megafauna: the big species that get the glory.
    — Mark Rozzo, Town & Country, 26 Nov. 2012
  • These drill holes were also made prior to the bones becoming fossilized, meaning that humans must have existed alongside these megafauna to have access to their fresh bones.
    — Ryan McRae, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 Dec. 2023
  • This cometary origin story, with its mix of ancient humans, vanished megafauna and global cataclysm, quickly spread beyond the confines of scientific journals.
    — Zach St. George, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'megafauna.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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