New findings published in Royal Society Open Science challenge the long-held idea that Australia’s First Peoples hunted the continent’s giant animals to extinction. A team led by University of New South Wales palaeontologist Mike Archer re-examined a fossilised tibia from a giant sthenurine kangaroo—long cited as proof of prehistoric butchery—and found the cut was made long after the bone had fossilised.
“Back in 1980, we interpreted the cut as evidence of butchery because that was the best conclusion we could draw with the tools available at the time. Thanks to advances in technology, we can now see that our original interpretation was wrong,” said Archer, according to Phys.org.
Micro-CT scans revealed seven deep desiccation cracks along the shaft, and radiometric dating indicated the bone had already fossilised when the incision occurred. The microscopic striations confirm a metal tool made the mark, but its timing suggests the tibia was collected as a curio rather than butchered.
The Mammoth Cave specimen, recovered during the First World War, had been considered the “smoking gun” for human-driven megafauna extinction. “If humans really were responsible for unsustainably hunting Australia’s megafauna, we’d expect to find a lot more evidence of hunting or butchering in the fossil record. Instead, all we ever had as hard evidence was this one bone—and now we have strong evidence that the cut wasn’t made while the animal was alive,” said Archer.
The study also analysed a fossil tooth charm given to archaeologist Kim Akerman in the 1960s by a Worora Nations man. X-ray fluorescence matched the tooth—belonging to the giant marsupial Zygomaturus trilobus—to Mammoth Cave material. Its discovery in the Kimberley, thousands of kilometres away, indicates ancient trade networks. “The tooth’s presence in the Kimberley, far from its likely origin, suggests it may have been carried by humans or traded across vast distances,” said Kenny Travouillon of the Western Australian Museum.
Other alleged butchery evidence is being re-evaluated. A Diprotodon incisor from Spring Creek once thought cut by people now appears to bear bite marks from tiger quolls. Burned eggshell fragments attributed to the giant bird Genyornis newtoni remain contentious. “There are many sites with partially burned eggshells of the megafaunal bird Genyornis that clearly show humans were gathering those eggs, cooking them over a fire, and then eating them,” said paleoclimatologist Gifford Miller, according to ABC News Australia, though debate persists over the shells’ species origin.
Professor Peter Veth of the University of Western Australia, who was not involved in the new paper, told ABC News Australia that there is “no evidence in the Pleistocene archaeology of Sahul for human-linked predation or species loss.” Many researchers, including Archer, point to severe climatic swings around 65,000 years ago as the likely driver. “What we’re saying on the flip side is that it’s more probable it was climate change,” Archer told ABC News Australia.
Aboriginal oral histories and rock art in Murujuga and the Pilbara record meetings with enormous creatures. “Some of the very large depictions of animals such as kangaroos, goannas, and wombats are likely to represent the megafaunal species that our old people were seeing in this landscape all that time ago,” said Peter Cooper, operations manager of the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, to ABC News Australia. He added that finding a tool embedded in bones would extend hunting traditions “back further than 60,000 years.”
Archer said further testing of Mammoth Cave material and objects like the tooth charm could clarify the continent’s deep past. “As a scientist, it’s not just my job but my responsibility to update the record when new evidence comes to light,” he said.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.