Australia's Lost Giants Reading Answers for IELTS - Check Detailed Explanation

The IELTS Reading test includes a total of 3 passages with increasing difficulty from the first to the third. "Australia's Lost Giants" is a commonly repeated passage in the Reading test. The passage details the mysterious extinction of Australia's ancient megafauna. It also explores different theories and perspectives of people on the extinction.   

In this article, we have included IELTS Reading Answers: "Australia's Lost Giants" passage with sample questions. The standard of these questions has been set according to the difficulty of the IELTS Reading Test. Sample answers with proper location and explanation are mentioned to help test-takers structure their answers for the original IELTS test. 

Follow the complete article to understand the structure and question pattern for the Australia Megafauna Reading Answers. Also, check out some most commonly asked questions that can help you analyse the test better. 

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Australia's Lost Giants Reading Passage

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 26-38, which are based on the Reading Passage below.

Australia's Lost Giants

What happened to Australia's megafauna, the giant animals that once existed across this enormous continent?

A. In 1969, a fossil hunter named Rod Wells came to Naracoorte in South Australia to explore what was then known as Victoria Cave. Wells clawed through narrow passages, and eventually into a huge chamber. Its floor of red soil was littered with strange objects. It took Wells a moment to realize what he was looking at: the bones of thousands of creatures that must have fallen through holes in the ground above and become trapped. Some of the oldest belonged to mammals far larger than any found today in Australia. They were the ancient Australian megafauna - huge animals of the Pleistocene epoch. In boneyards across the continent, scientists have found the fossils of a giant snake, a huge flightless bird, and a seven foot kangaroo, to name but a few. Given how much ink has been spilled on the extinction of the dinosaurs, it's a wonder that even more hasn't been devoted to megafauna. Prehistoric humans never threw spears at Tyrannosaurus rex but really did hunt mammoths and mastodons.

B. The disappearance of megafauna in America - mammoths, saber-toothed cats, giant sloths, among others - happened relatively soon after the arrival of human beings, about 13,000 years ago. In the 1960s, paleoecologist Paul Martin developed what became known as the blitzkrieg hypothesis. Modern humans, Martin said, created havoc as they spread through the Americas, wielding spears to annihilate animals that had never faced a technological predator. But this period of extinction wasn't comprehensive. North America kept its deer, black bears and a small type of bison, and South America its jaguars and llamas.

C. What happened to Australia's large animals is baffling. For years scientists blamed the extinctions on climate change. Indeed, Australia has been drying out for over a million years, and the megafauna were faced with a continent where vegetation began to disappear. Australian paleontologist Tim Flannery suggests that people, who arrived on the continent around 50,000 years ago, used fire to hunt, which led to deforestation. Something dramatic happened to Australia's dominant land creatures - somewhere around 46,000 years ago, strikingly soon after the invasion of a tool-wielding, highly intelligent predator. In Flannery's 1994 book called The Future Eaters, he sets out his thesis that human beings are a new kind of animal on the planet, and are in general, one prone to ruining ecosystems. Flannery's book proved highly controversial. Some viewed it as critical of the Aborigines, who pride themselves on living in harmony with nature. The more basic problem with Flannery's thesis is that there is no direct evidence that they killed any Australian megafauna. It would be helpful if someone uncovered a Diprotodon skeleton with a spear point embedded in a rib - or perhaps Thylacoleo bones next to the charcoal of a human campfire. Such kill sites have been found in the Americas but not in Australia.

D. The debate about megafauna pivots to a great degree on the techniques for dating old bones and the sediments in which they are buried. If scientists can show that the megafauna died out fairly quickly and that this extinction event happened within a few hundred, or even a couple thousand years, of the arrival of people, that's a strong case - even if a purely circumstantial one - that the one thing was the direct result of the other. As it happens, there is one place where there may be such evidence: Cuddie Springs in New South Wales. Today the person most vocal about the site is archeologist Judith Field. In 1991, she discovered megafauna bones directly adjacent to stone tools - a headlinemaking find. She says there are two layers showing the association, one about 30,000 years old, the other 35,000 years old. If that dating is accurate, it would mean humans and megafauna coexisted in Australia for something like 20,000 years. "What Cuddie Springs demonstrates is that you have an extended overlap of humans and megafauna," Field says.

Nonsense, say her critics. They say the fossils have been moved from their original

resting places and redeposited in younger sediments.

E. Another famous boneyard in the same region is a place called Wellington Caves, where Diprotodon, the largest known marsupial - an animal which carries its young in a pouch like kangaroos and koalas - was first discovered. Scientist Mike Augee says that: "This is a sacred site in Australian paleontology." Here's why: In 1830 a local official named George Rankin lowered himself into the cave on a rope tied to a protrusion in the cave wall. The protrusion turned out to be a bone. A surveyor named Thomas Mitchell arrived later that year, explored the caves in the area, and shipped fossils off to Richard Owen, the British paleontologist who later gained fame for revealing the existence of dinosaurs. Owen recognized that the Wellington cave bones belonged to an extinct marsupial. Later, between 1909 and 1915 sediments in Mammoth Cave that contained fossils were hauled out and examined in a chaotic manner that no scientist today would approve. Still, one bone in particular has drawn extensive attention: a femur with a cut in it, possibly left there by a sharp tool.

F. Unfortunately, the Earth preserves its history haphazardly. Bones disintegrate, the land erodes, the climate changes, forests come and go, rivers change their course - and history, if not destroyed, is steadily concealed. By necessity, narratives are constructed from limited data. Australia's first people expressed themselves in rock art. Paleontologist Peter Murray has studied a rock painting in far northern Australia that shows what looks very much like a megafauna marsupial known as Palorchestes. In Western Australia another site shows what appears to be a hunter with either a marsupial lion or a Tasmanian tiger - a major distinction, since the marsupial lion went extinct and the much smaller Tasmanian tiger survived into the more recent historical era. But as Murray says, "Every step of the way involves interpretation. The data doesn't just speak for itself."

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Australia Megafauna IELTS Reading Answers 

Questions 1-5

The text above has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraphs contain the following information?

Every question has only one answer but you may use any of the letters A-F for more

than one question.

Circle the correct letters in your answer sheet.

1. Descriptions of naturally occurring events that make the past hard to trace

2. An account of the discovery of a particular animal which had died out

3. The reason why a variety of animals all died in the same small area

4. The suggestion that a procedure to uncover fossilised secrets was inappropriate

5. Examples of the kinds of animals that did not die out as a result of hunting

Questions 6-7

For questions 6-7, choose the correct answer A, B, or C.

Circle the correct letter in your answer sheet.

6. Judith Field claims that

A. She made a great discovery in 1991.

B. She found fossil remains of giant animals in layers of sediments very close to those

which had stone tools in them.

C. She was most vocal about Cuddie Springs in South New Wales as an important

archeological site.

7. Judith Field's opponents claim that

A. The fossils of some younger animals were found in Cuddie Springs.

B. There was long co-existence of humans and megafauna.

C. The layers where fossils were found had been displaced

Question 8

Which TWO of these possible reasons for Australian megafauna extinction are

mentioned in the text?

Choose TWO letters from A-E for question 8.

A. human activity

B. disease

C. loss of habitat

D. A drop in temperature

E. The introduction of new animal species

Question 9

The list below shows possible forms of proof for humans having contact with

Australian megafauna.

Which TWO possible forms of proof does the writer say have been found in

Australia?

Choose TWO letters from A-E for question 9.

A. bone injury caused by a man-made object

B. bones near to early types of weapons

C. man-made holes designed for trapping animals

D. preserved images of megafauna species

E. animal remains at camp fires

Questions 10-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the text?

Circle

TRUE if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

FALSE if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

10. There is sufficient evidence to support Tim Flannery's ideas about megafauna

extinction.

11. There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas.

12. There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas.

13. There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas.

Questions 1–5: Matching Information

1. Descriptions of naturally occurring events that make the past hard to trace

• Answer: F
• Location: Paragraph F
• Explanation: Mentions erosion, climate change, forest loss, and other natural forces that obscure historical evidence.

2. An account of the discovery of a particular animal which had died out

• Answer: E
• Location: Paragraph E
• Explanation: Describes the finding of Diprotodon bones in Wellington Caves and their identification by Richard Owen.

3. The reason why a variety of animals all died in the same small area

• Answer: A
• Location: Paragraph A
• Explanation: Explains that animals fell through ground holes and became trapped, leading to mass death in one spot.

4. The suggestion that a procedure to uncover fossilised secrets was inappropriate

• Answer: E
• Location: Paragraph E
• Explanation: Refers to a chaotic excavation method between 1909–1915 that modern scientists would not approve of.

5. Examples of the kinds of animals that did not die out as a result of hunting

• Answer: B
• Location: Paragraph B
• Explanation: Notes that deer, black bears, jaguars, and llamas survived despite the extinction of other species.

Questions 6–7: Multiple Choice

6. Judith Field claims that

• Answer: B
• Location: Paragraph D
• Explanation: She found megafauna bones directly adjacent to stone tools, suggesting a long period of coexistence.

7. Judith Field's opponents claim that

• Answer: C
• Location: Paragraph D
• Explanation: Critics argue the fossils were redeposited and not originally from the same layer, questioning the evidence.

Question 8: Causes of Extinction

• Answer: A (human activity), C (loss of habitat)
• Location: Paragraph C
• Explanation:
  • A: Flannery claims humans used fire and tools, impacting ecosystems.
  • C: Australia’s drying climate caused vegetation loss, affecting habitat.

Question 9: Proof of Human Contact

• Answer: A (bone injury from a tool), D (preserved images of megafauna)
• Location:
  • A: Paragraph E – Femur with cut marks from a possible sharp tool
  • D: Paragraph F – Rock art showing extinct megafauna
• Explanation: These serve as visual and physical evidence of human-megafauna interaction.

Questions 10–13: True / False / Not Given

10. There is sufficient evidence to support Tim Flannery's ideas about megafauna extinction

• Answer: FALSE
• Location: Paragraph C
• Explanation: There’s no direct evidence mentioned in the passage to support Flannery's theory.

11. There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas

• Answer: NOT GIVEN
• Location: NOT GIVEN
• Explanation: NOT GIVEN

12. There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas

• Answer: NOT GIVEN
• Location: NOT GIVEN
• Explanation: NOT GIVEN

13. There are problems with Paul Martin's 'blitzkrieg' hypothesis for the Americas

• Answer: NOT GIVEN
• Location: NOT GIVEN
• Explanation: NOT GIVEN

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Conclusion

Preparing for the IELTS reading section? This article on Australia’s Lost Giants reading answers gives you all the answers, locations, and clear explanations to help you understand the passage better. If you want expert tips or need help with IELTS preparation, connect with upGrad’s experts today for better guidance.