Sure, but the fossil record is full of species which went extinct, replaced by others which competed more effectively.
I was asked: why did some Great Apes survive, when no ancient pre-humans did?
A good example is Neanderthals in Europe -- survived for hundreds of thousands of years, disappeared relatively soon after modern humans appeared there.
What do you call that?
Did humans hunt down Neanderthals and exterminate them?
Probably not, for one reason, DNA suggests there was a small amount of interbreeding that went on, which may also rule out epidemic disease.
That leaves competition for the same food as the prime suspect.
Saying that the subsequent animals in the fossil record “competed more effectively” is an unobserved statement.
Who is to say that the Neanderthals are not antediluvian humans? More conjecture by exclusion.
Uniformitarianism is one big problem with modern “science”. It is pure dogma.
Probably, if history teaches us anything, people hate those different from themselves. Shared DNA is a trophy of war.