A/Professor has joined a national team to study fossil bones of these animals for the past decade. Their findings,published in , shed new light on the mystery of what drove these ancient megafauna to extinction.
The first bones were found by the Barada Barna people during cultural heritage surveys on their traditional lands about 100 kilometres west of Mackay, at South Walker Creek Mine. The study shares the first reliable glimpse of the giants that roamed the Australian tropics between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago.
These megafauna were the largest land animals to live in Australia since the time of the dinosaurs. Understanding the ecological role they played and the environmental impact of their loss remains their most valuable untold story.
While megafauna lived at South Walker Creek, people had arrived on the continent and were spreading across it. Our study adds new evidence to the ongoing megafauna extinction debate, but importantly underscores how much is left to learn from the fossil record.
The megafauna welcoming party - as told by the team
We excavated fossils from four sites and made detailed studies of the sites themselves to find the age of the fossils and understand what the environment was like in the past.
Our findings give us an idea of what megafaunal life was like in the tropical Australian savanna over a period of about 20,000 years, from around 60,000 to 40,000 years ago. During this time, the northern megafauna were different to those from the south.
We have found at least 13 extinct species so far at, with mega-reptiles as apex predators, and mega-mammals their prey. Many of the species discovered are likely new species or northern variations of their southern counterparts.
Some, like the extinct crocodiles, were thought to have gone extinct long before people were on the scene. However, we now know they survived in at least one place 60,000-40,000 years ago.
Imagine first sighting a six-metre goanna and its Komodo Dragon-sized relative, or bumping into a land-dwelling crocodile and its plate-mail armoured aquatic cousin. The mammals were equally bizarre, including a giant bucktoothed wombat, a strange “bear-sloth” marsupial, and enormous kangaroos and wallabies.
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A yet-to-be named giantkangaroois the largest ever found. With an estimated mass of 274 kg, it beats the previous contender, the goliath short-faced kangaroo,Procoptodon goliah.Konstantinov, A. Atuchin, R. Allen, S. Hocknull. Queen