Climate change, habitat destruction, extinctions — the Earth has seen it all before, thousands of years ago. And humans may have been partly to blame for many of those changes in nature, too.

A new study published Friday in Science Advances shows that the arrival of humans in Patagonia, combined with a changing climate, led to the extinction of many species of megafauna about 12,000 years ago in the southern portion of what is now South America. The research offers a significant moment in the natural history of the continent: a definitive date of the mass extinction of megafauna — large or giant animals, like mammoths and giant sloths — in this part of the world. It also suggests a potential relationship between threatened species and climate change in our own time.

The authors of the study from the University of Adelaide in Australia, with help from scientists from South America and elsewhere, found that the presence of humans in Patagonia was not enough to drive extinction, but the one-two punch of humans and a warmer climate led to the collapse of many species.