megafauna

[ meg-uh-faw-nuh ]

/ ˈmɛg əˌfɔ nə /

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noun

Zoology. large or giant animals, especially of a given area. Because megafauna tend to have long lives and slow population growth and recovery rates, many such species, as elephants and whales, are particularly vulnerable to overexploitation by humans.

Ecology. animals of a given area that can be seen with the unaided eye.

Classical Mythology. large or giant mythical creatures, often resembling a familiar animal, as a hellhound, or a composite of different animals, as a griffin.

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Origin of megafauna

First recorded in 1925–30; mega- + fauna

Words nearby megafauna

megadontia, megadose, megadrought, megaelectron volt, Megaera, megafauna, megaflop, megaflops, megagamete, megagametophyte, megahertz

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use megafauna in a sentence

Farther inland, you can spot all kinds of life-list megafauna within just a few hours of Montréal.
Experience Endless Summer amid Québec’s Wild Riches|mmiranda|July 25, 2022|Outside Online
The opening is for an ecosystems stewardship administrator, a brand-new role that will include managing the local megafauna, planning new public lands, and metering local carbon use.
These Towns Are Fighting Climate Change at the Local Level|Fred Dreier|February 16, 2022|Outside Online
Strikingly, this transition happened only after the ice age megafauna—mammoths, giant ground sloths, giant deer, and horses—disappeared.
How the Extinction of Ice Age Mammals May Have Forced Us to Invent Civilization|Nicholas R. Longrich|December 29, 2021|Singularity Hub
Seven of those layers, in the area Bennett and his colleagues recently excavated, held human tracks along with those of long-lost megafauna.
23,000-year-old footprints suggest people reached the Americas early|Kiona N. Smith|September 23, 2021|Ars Technica

The combination of a weak magnetic field and this decrease in the sun’s output around the same time “created the perfect storm” of climate and broader environmental changes, placing a major stress on megafauna populations, Turney says.
A magnetic field reversal 42,000 years ago may have contributed to mass extinctions|Carolyn Gramling|February 18, 2021|Science News
Within a few thousand years of human arrival on Australia, all the continent's megafauna were hunted to extinction.
Here on Earth, The Forgotten Founding Father, and Other Reviews|The Daily Beast|April 30, 2011|DAILY BEAST

British Dictionary definitions for megafauna

megafauna

/ (ˈmɛɡəˌfɔːnə) /

noun

the component of the fauna of a region or period that comprises the larger terrestrial animals

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for megafauna

megafauna

[ mĕg′ə-fô′nə ]

Large or relatively large animals of a particular place or time period. Saber-toothed tigers and mastodons belong to the extinct megafauna of the Oligocene and Pleistocene Epochs.