Giant kangaroos were able to survive until 20,000 years ago

Oct. 10 () –

A giant kangaroo that once roamed on all fours through remote forests in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea it may have survived as little as 20,000 years ago.

This is long after the large megafauna on mainland Australia became extinct, about 40,000 years ago, indicates new research.

Palaeontologists from Flinders University, in collaboration with archaeologists and geoscientists from the Australian National University, have used new techniques to re-examine megafaunal bones from the rich fossil bed of Nombe Rock Shelter in Chimbu province. in an attempt to better understand the intriguing natural history of Papua New Guinea.

The new analysis produced revised ages for the bones and suggests that several species of large mammals, including the extinct thylacine and a panda-like marsupial (named Hulitherium tomasettii), were still living in the Papua New Guinea Highlands when humans arrived by first time, possibly about 60,000 years ago.

Surprisingly, two large extinct species of kangaroos, including one that hopped on four legs instead of two legs, they may have persisted in the region for another 40,000 years.

“If these megafaunal species really did survive in the Papua Highlands for much longer than their Australian counterparts, then it may have been because humans only visited the Nombe area infrequently and in low amounts until 20,000 years ago,” says ANU (Australian National University) Professor of Archaeological Sciences Tim Denham, co-lead author of the new study published in the journal Archeology in Oceania.

“The Nombe rock shelter is the only site in New Guinea that it is known to have been occupied by humans for tens of thousands of years and preserves remains of extinct species of megafauna, most of them exclusive to New Guinea.

“New Guinea is a forested and mountainous northern part of the formerly larger Australian mainland called ‘Sahul’, but our knowledge of its faunal and human history is poor compared to that of mainland Australia,” says Professor Denham, who initially carried out field work in 1990.

Research co-author Professor Gavin Prideaux, from the Flinders University Paleontology Laboratory, says Nombe’s latest study is consistent with similar evidence from Kangaroo Island, previously produced by Flinders paleontologists and published in the Journal of Quaternary Science in 2015, which also suggests that megafaunal kangaroos may have persisted until around 20,000 years ago in some of the least accessible areas of the continent.

He says that many general assumptions about megafaunal extinction timeframes have been “more harmful than helpful.”

“Although it is often assumed that all megafaunal species in Australia and New Guinea became extinct from coast to coast by 40,000 years ago, this generalization is not based on much actual evidence,” says Professor Prideaux. “It’s probably more detrimental than helpful to figure out exactly what happened to the dozens of large mammals, birds and reptiles that were living on the continent when the people arrived.

The Nombe Rock Shelter, located in the vicinity of the Nongefaro, Pila and Nola communities in Papua, would have been infrequently visited by nomadic groups of Highland peoples in prehistoric times.

The hidden rock shelter was first excavated by archaeologists in the 1960s, but the most intensive phase of fieldwork was carried out in 1971 and 1980 by ANU archaeologist Dr Mary-Jane Mountain, who is also an author. of the last article. Her initial research produced the first detailed description and interpretation of the Nombe site and it played a critical role in shaping our understanding of the human history of the Papuan Highlands.