How to Use megafauna in a Sentence

megafauna

noun
  • Yet things are looking up for this most charismatic of megafauna.
    — The Economist, 16 Sep. 2017
  • Over the course of evolution, immense megafauna have roamed the lands or swum in the seas.
    — Jeffrey M. Rodgers, Scientific American, 29 Sep. 2022
  • Best to take the play’s cue and focus less on the people and more on the charismatic megafauna.
    — Vulture, 30 Mar. 2023
  • The Earth has long been home to startlingly massive megafauna.
    — Daisy Hernandez, Popular Mechanics, 9 July 2020
  • New Zealand is a perfect place to study the effects of megafauna on their landscape.
    — Jacob Mikanowski, The Atlantic, 19 Dec. 2017
  • The widespread megafauna of the late Pleistocene did not simply drop dead in unison.
    — Brian Switek, WIRED, 14 Mar. 2011
  • Koalas are a national icon and, like many other charismatic megafauna, a boon for tourism.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 17 June 2024
  • The new research also highlights how a number of megafauna that exist today may be at risk.
    — Conor Feehly, Discover Magazine, 26 June 2024
  • 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 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
  • Both species are highly charismatic megafauna.
    — Andrew Freedman, CNN Money, 9 Apr. 2026
  • Only about 40 of the megafauna, the biggest of the big, died out at the end of the Ice Age.
    — Dennis Pillion | [email protected], al, 14 Dec. 2021
  • 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
  • Those stressors, coupled with megadroughts, brought about the end of Madagascar’s megafauna.
    — Rasha Aridi, Smithsonian Magazine, 20 Oct. 2020
  • 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
  • Remains of Pleistocene megafauna have also been found preserved in caves within the canyon.
    — Soo Kim, MSNBC Newsweek, 30 Mar. 2026
  • 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
  • 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
  • Guests can venture out on two game drives each day, with a team of expert guides at-the-ready to point out Kenya’s most marvelous megafauna in the flesh.
    — Jared Ranahan, Forbes, 8 Jan. 2025
  • The main debate is whether the paintings at La Lindosa depict long-extinct megafauna.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 13 Oct. 2022
  • 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
  • Humans may not have been responsible for the extinction of African megafauna.
    — Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper's magazine, 10 Feb. 2019
  • Native Americans also posited that megafauna like giant beavers and bison had shrunk to their present sizes over time.
    — Christian Elliott, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Feb. 2023
  • 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 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
  • Giant megafauna like elephants and aurochs, the wild ancestors of today’s domestic cows, roamed the land.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 10 Mar. 2022
  • 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
  • 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
  • At the time that the cut was identified, researchers proposed that the mark proved that First Peoples butchered ancient megafauna.
    — Mindy Weisberger, CNN Money, 27 Oct. 2025
  • These megafauna ate prehistoric avocados whole, spreading the pits—and, as a consequence, the fruits—across the region.
    — Eli Wizevich, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Mar. 2025

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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