In a recent study, Professor Mike Archer from the University of New South Wales and his team revisited the fossilized tibia (the lower leg bone) of the now-extinct giant stenurine kangaroo. These bones, discovered in Mammoth Cave in southwestern Australia around World War I, provided solid evidence that Indigenous Australians hunted large animals, a finding in which Professor Archer was involved. A 1980 study had concluded that distinctive notches in the fossilized bones indicated slaughter. However, Professor Archer is now ready to acknowledge that this initial conclusion was incorrect.
Giant animal unearthed from mammoth cave about 50,000 years ago: giant long-beaked echidna Malayanglossus hackettii, giant kangaroo Procoptodon brauneorum, giant diprotodont Zygomaturus trilobus, and possum (Thylacinus cynocephalus). Image credit: Peter Schouten.
“As a scientist, updating the record as new evidence emerges is both my duty and responsibility,” Professor Archer stated.
“In 1980, we interpreted those cuts as signs of slaughter based on the best conclusions we could reach with the tools available to us then.”
“With advancements in technology, we now understand that our original interpretation was incorrect.”
“After the 1960s, there was a significant debate about whether Aboriginal peoples coexisted with Australia’s prehistoric megafauna or contributed to their extinction.”
“Many believed the incisions in the bones were made by humans using tools, suggesting that the extinction of megafauna and the arrival of humans approximately 65,000 years ago were not coincidental.”
“For decades, the bones from Mammoth Cave were seen as the ‘smoking gun’ indicating that Indigenous Australians hunted giant animals, but with that evidence dispelled, the discussion on megafauna extinction is now reopened, and the role of humans is more ambiguous than ever.”
To reexamine the same dissected stenurine leg bone, Professor Archer and his co-authors utilized advanced 3D scanning technology to analyze the bone without causing any damage.
They also employed modern radiometric dating methods to accurately determine the age of the bones and their cut surfaces while conducting detailed microscopic examinations.
Their findings indicated that the cuts were made after the bone had dried and cracked, suggesting the bones were likely already fossilized when the incisions occurred.
Paleontologists also investigated a fossilized tooth given to archaeologist Kim Ackerman by a Wora man from the Mowanjum mission, who had collaborated with Indigenous communities in the Kimberley during the 1960s.
This tooth, belonging to the Zygomaturus trilobus, a species of giant marsupial related to wombats, was part of Australia’s Pleistocene megafauna.
The tooth was retrieved from the Kimberley in northwestern Australia, and its characteristics closely matched other fossils found in Mammoth Cave in southwestern Australia.
Dr. Kenny Trabouillon from the Western Australian Museum remarked, “The discovery of this tooth in the Kimberley, far from its likely origin in Mammoth Cave, implies it may have been transported or traded by humans across great distances.”
“This suggests that cultural appreciation and symbolic usage of fossils existed long before the advent of European science.”
“The First Peoples might have been the continent’s, and possibly the world’s, earliest paleontologists.”
Researchers haven’t entirely dismissed the possibility of Aboriginal people having hunted Australia’s megafauna.
However, without concrete evidence, we cannot definitively assert that Indigenous Australians caused its extinction.
“While these remain hypotheses, we need substantiated proof before concluding that predation by Indigenous peoples contributed to the extinction of now-vanished megafauna, especially considering the long history of Indigenous peoples respecting and sustainably utilizing Australia’s wildlife,” Professor Archer stated.
“If humans were truly responsible for the unsustainable hunting of Australia’s megafauna, we would expect to find much more evidence of such hunting in the fossil record. Instead, the only solid evidence we had until now was this single bone, which now shows strong indications that the mutilations occurred post-mortem.”
If humans were not solely accountable for the extinction of Australia’s ancient megafauna, then what was?
Researchers indicate that many megafauna species went extinct long before humans arrived, and while some coexisted with humans for millennia, their decline often aligned with significant climate changes.
“What we can ascertain is that the First Peoples were the first in Australia to exhibit a keen interest in and collect fossils, likely thousands of years before Europeans arrived on the continent,” the researchers affirmed.
Their paper was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
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Michael Archer et al. 2025. Australia’s first people: hunters of extinct megafauna or Australia’s first fossil collectors. R. Soc. Open Science 12(10):250078; doi: 10.1098/rsos.250078
Source: www.sci.news
