Excavations at the Nombe rock shelter taken in 1979 during early fieldwork led by the Australian National University. Credit: Barry Shaw (ANU)/ Archaeology in Oceania journal.
Remarkably, 2 big extinct kangaroo species, among which bounded on four legs instead of two, may have survived in the area for an additional 40,000 years.
” If these megafaunal types did certainly endure in the PNG Highlands for a lot longer than their Australian equivalents, then it may have been due to the fact that individuals only checked out the Nombe location rarely and in low numbers up until after 20,000 years earlier,” states ANU Professor of Archaeological Science Tim Denham, co-lead author in the brand-new research study published in the journal Archaeology in Oceania.
” Nombe rock shelter is the only site in New Guinea understood to have been occupied by people for 10s of thousands of years and preserves remains of extinct megafaunal types, the majority of them special to New Guinea.
” New Guinea is a forested, mountainous, northern part of the formerly more extensive Australian continent called Sahul however our knowledge of its faunal and human history is bad compared with that of mainland Australia,” says Professor Denham who at first undertook fieldwork in the PNG Highlands in 1990.
Research study co-author Professor Gavin Prideaux, from the Flinders University Palaeontology Laboratory, states the most current Nombe study is constant with similar proof from Kangaroo Island, formerly produced by Flinders paleontologists, that also recommends megafaunal kangaroos might have persisted to around 20,000 years back in some of the less accessible areas of the continent.
He states numerous basic presumptions about megafaunal extinction timelines have actually been “more damaging than valuable.”.
” Although it is typically presumed that all of the megafaunal types in Australia and New Guinea became extinct coast to coast by 40,000 years back, this generalization is not based on quite actual evidence,” says Professor Prideaux. “It is most likely more harmful than practical in resolving precisely what took place to the lots of large mammals, birds, and reptiles that were living on the continent when people first showed up.”.
The Nombe rock shelter, located in the vicinity of the Nongefaro, Pila, and Nola communities in PNG, would have been infrequently checked out by nomadic groups of Highlands individuals in prehistoric times.
The hidden rock shelter was first excavated by archaeologists in the 1960s, but the most extensive phase of fieldwork was performed in 1971 and 1980 by ANU archaeologist Dr. Mary-Jane Mountain, who is also an author on the most recent paper. Her initial research yielded the first in-depth description and analysis of the Nombe website and played a critical function in shaping our understanding of the human history of the PNG Highlands.
” Mary-Jane (Mountain) at first assumed that megafauna at the site might have made it through for tens of millennia after human colonization, but this has actually just been verified with the development of new strategies in archaeology, dating, and palaeontological science,” Professor Denham states.
Professor Prideaux says these brand-new applications of contemporary analytical techniques, or new excavations at the Nombe website, would even more confirm timelines of late making it through megafauna and duration of profession by people in PNG.
Referral: “Re-evaluating the proof for late-surviving megafauna at Nombe rockshelter in the New Guinea highlands” by Gavin J. Prideaux, Isaac A. R. Kerr, Jacob D. van Zoelen, Rainer Grün, Sander van der Kaars, Annette Oertle, Katerina Douka, Elle Grono, Aleese Barron, Mary-Jane Mountain, Michael C. Westaway and Tim Denham, 16 September 2022, Archaeology in Oceania.DOI: 10.1002/ arco.5274.
The research study was funded by the Australian Research Council..
Illustration of PNG megafauna Hulitherium, Thylacine, Protemnodon, Tree Kangaroo, Bulmers Flying Fox and Bruijns Long-beaked Echidna (left to right) species: Hulitherium thomasetti, Thlacinus sp. cf. T. cynocephalus, Protemnodon nombe, Protemnodon tumbuna, Dendrolagus noibano, Aproteles bumerae (extant), Zaglossus bruijni (extant) in New Guinea, Upper Montane forest. Credit: Peter Schouten (End of the Megafauna).
The reign of Papua New Guineas megafauna continued long after people showed up.
A new research study recommends that a huge kangaroo that formerly traversed the Papua New Guinea Highlands on 4 legs may have lived as recently as 20,000 years back, long after large-bodied megafauna on mainland Australia became extinct.
In an effort for more information about the interesting nature of PNG, paleontologists from Flinders University and archaeologists and geoscientists from Australian National University (ANU) have reconsidered megafauna bones from the abundant Nombe Rock Shelter fossil site in Chimbu Province.
New dating methods from the research reveal that when humans very first shown up in the PNG Highlands, roughly 60,000 years ago, many giant mammal species, including the extinct thylacine and a marsupial that resembled a panda (named Hulitherium tomasettii), were still present.
