Man-made climate change has completely eradicated its first mammal species, reports CNN.
The Bramble Cay melomys, a small brown rat, once inhabited an island off northern Australia and had not been seen for the last decade, per CNN. A 2016 report suggested the animal had gone extinct, but that finding was not confirmed by the Australian government until this week.
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As many as several hundred rats lived on the tiny island in the 1970s, but the population rapidly declined in the following decades and the melomys was classified as endangered by 1992, reports CNN. Now that the species has been declared extinct, the Australian government will end its endangered species protections.
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