A goliath kangaroo that once roamed Papua New Guinea’s remote woods on four legs. A new investigation reveals
Working with Australian Public College archeologists and geoscientists, they have utilized new methods to rethink megafauna bones from the rich Nombe Rock Sanctuary fossil site in the Chimbu Region in a bid to more readily grasp the charming normal history of PNG.
The new examination created changed times of the bones and proposes that a few huge vertebrate species, including the wiped out thylacine and a panda-like marsupial (called Hulitherium tomasettii), still lived in the PNG Good Countries when individuals previously showed up, perhaps quite a while back.
Amazingly, two huge wiped-out kangaroo species, including one that was limited to four legs as opposed to jumping on two legs, may have endured in the area for an additional 40,000 years.
“In the event that these megafaunal species did without a doubt get by in the PNG high countries any more than their Australian reciprocals, then it might have been on the grounds that individuals just visited the Nombe region rarely and in low numbers until quite a while back,” says ANU Teacher of Archeological Science Tim Denham, co-lead creator of the new review distributed in the journal Paleohistory in Oceania.
“Nombe rock cover is the main site in New Guinea known to have been involved by individuals for a huge number of years, and jam survives from wiped out megafaunal species, the majority of them novel to New Guinea.
“New Guinea is a forested, bumpy, northern piece of the previously greater Australian landmass called ‘Sahul’, yet our insight into its faunal and mankind’s set of experiences is poor compared to that of central Australia,” says Teacher Denham, who at first embraced hands-on work in the PNG High Countries in 1990.
Unearthings at the Nombe rock cover were taken in 1979 during early hands-on work driven by the Australian Public College. Credit: Barry Shaw (ANU)/Paleontology in Oceania Diary.
Teacher Gavin Prideaux, from the Flinders College Fossil Science Lab, says the most recent Nombe study is steady with comparable proof from Kangaroo Island, recently delivered by Flinders scientists and distributed in the Diary of Quaternary Science in 2015, that likewise proposes megafaunal kangaroos might have endured for about a long time in a portion of the less open region of the mainland.
He says many general suspicions regarding megafaunal elimination timetables have been “more unsafe than supportive”.
“Despite the fact that it is often accepted that all of the megafaunal species in Australia and New Guinea became wiped out across the nation quite a while back, this speculation did not depend on a lot of real proof,” says Teacher Prideaux. “It is likely more unsafe than supportive in settling precisely what exactly happened to the many huge vertebrates, birds, and reptiles that were living on the landmass when individuals originally showed up.”
The Nombe rock cover, situated nearby the Nongefaro, Pila and Nola people groups in PNG, would have been rarely visited by roaming gatherings of Good Countries people groups in ancient times.
The secret stone haven was first exhumed by archeologists during the 1960s, yet the most serious period of hands-on work was led between 1971 and 1980 by ANU excavator Dr. Mary-Jane Mountain, who is likewise the creator of the most recent paper. Her underlying examination yielded the main definite portrayal and translation of the Nombe site and assumed a vital part in molding how we might interpret mankind’s set of experiences in the PNG High Countries.
Mary-Jane (Mountain) at first guessed that megafauna at the site might have made due for many centuries after human colonization, yet this has just been affirmed with the coming of new methods in paleohistory, dating, and paleontological science,” Teacher Denham says.
Teacher Prideaux says these new uses of current logical methods, or new unearthings at the Nombe site, would additionally affirm timetables of late enduring megafauna and terms of occupation by individuals in PNG.
The most recent examination was conducted in paleontology in Oceania.
More information: Gavin J. Prideaux et al, Re‐evaluating the evidence for late‐surviving megafauna at Nombe rockshelter in the New Guinea highlands, Archaeology in Oceania (2022). DOI: 10.1002/arco.5274
Matthew C. Mcdowell et al, Re-evaluating the Late Quaternary fossil mammal assemblage of Seton Rockshelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, including the evidence for late-surviving megafauna, Journal of Quaternary Science (2015). DOI: 10.1002/jqs.2789
Journal information: Journal of Quaternary Science
