An ancient bone recasts how Indigenous Australians treated megafauna
A new look at cuts on a giant kangaroo bone reveal First Peoples as fossil collectors, not hunters who helped drive species extinct, some scientists argue.
Australia’s First Peoples were more early paleontologists than extinction-driving butchers, a group of scientists argue.
For decades, the debate over whether the first humans to inhabit present-day Australia contributed to the extinction of the country’s ancient megafauna has raged and smoldered.
Humans arrived at the landmass known as Sahul around 65,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch, when it was home to giant animals including huge marsupials, giant flightless birds and monitor lizards up to five meters long.
A fresh analysis of a fossil central to the debate overturns a “smoking gun” supporting the idea the First Peoples hunted these animals, the authors claim October 22 in Royal Society Open Science.
some scientists argue
Author's summary: Scientists argue First Peoples were fossil collectors.