climatic changes have not been as severe as those prior to human arrival, suggesting that humans and their effect on the vegetation did play a role in the extinctions. The central plateau lost more species than the dry south and southwest, suggesting that degraded habitats were more affected than arid habitats. Over-hunting by humans has been one of the most widely accepted hypotheses for the ultimate demise of the subfossil lemurs. The extinctions and human hunting pressure are associated due to the synchronicity of human arrival and species decline, as well as the suspected naïveté of the Malagasy wildlife during the early encounters with human hunters. Despite the assumptions, evidence of butchery has been minimal until recently, although folk memories of rituals associated with the killing of megafauna have been reported. Archeological evidence for butchery of giant subfossil lemurs, including Palaeopropithecus ingens and Pachylemur insignis, was found on specimens from two sites in southwestern Madagascar, Taolambiby and Tsirave. The bones had been collected in the early 20th century and lacked stratigraphic records; one of the bones with tool marks had been dated to the time of the first arrival of humans. Tool-induced bone alterations, in the form of cuts and chop marks near joints and other characteristic cuts and fractures, indicated the early human settlers skinned, disarticulated, and filleted giant lemurs. Prior to these finds, only modified bones of dwarf hippos and elephant birds, as well as giant aye-aye teeth, had been found. Although there is evidence that habitat loss, hunting, and other factors played a role in the demise of the subfossil lemurs, prior to the synergy hypothesis, each had its own discrepancies. Humans may have hunted the giant lemurs for food, but no signs of game-dependent butchery have been found. Madagascar was colonized by Iron-age pastoralists, horticulturalists, and fishermen, not big-game hunters. The blitzkrieg hypothesis predicts extinction within 100 and 1,000 years as humans sweep across the island, yet humans lived alongside the giant lemurs for more than 1,500 years. Alternatively, habitat loss and deforestation have been argued against because many giant lemurs were thought to be terrestrial, they are missing from undisturbed forested habitats, and their environment was not fully forested prior to the arrival of humans. Anthropologist Laurie Godfrey defended the effects of habitat loss by pointing out that most of the extinct lemurs have been shown to have been at least partly arboreal and dependent