A team of cavers helped rescue a 50,000-year-old kangaroo fossil

April 29, 2024 8:35 AM

A team of cavers helped rescue a 50,000-year-old kangaroo fossil.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (13 comments total)

Is he going to be okay?
posted by pracowity at 8:45 AM on April 29 [11 favorites]

I read that as a "team of cadavers" and that mental image was really something.
posted by mcduff at 9:17 AM on April 29 [7 favorites]

Wow! Evolution is crazy.

But has Australian English somehow been cruelly deprived of the term "spelunker"? Or is there some other distiction with "caver" that I'm missing?
posted by ropeladder at 9:53 AM on April 29 [1 favorite]

ropeladder, I'm not really enough of a caver to speak to this with much authority, but in my (American) experience cavers call themselves "cavers" and not "spelunkers". "Spelunking" seems to carry a connotation of dilettantism or amateurism. Somewhat surprising compared to my expectations around jargon usage but language be like that at times.
posted by dick dale the vampire at 11:04 AM on April 29 [2 favorites]

The OED online offers these years for first uses:

• spelunker: 1942
• potholer: 1900
• caver: 1653

posted by pracowity at 11:04 AM on April 29 [3 favorites]

Apparently I’m not the only one who initially read it as “cadavers”.

I see dead people
posted by notoriety public at 11:06 AM on April 29 [3 favorites]

Don't we recover things that are not living and rescue things that are?
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:14 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]

I read that as a "team of cadavers" and that mental image was really something.

The latest volume in the Locked Tomb series?
posted by Thorzdad at 1:30 PM on April 29 [3 favorites]

ropeladder, I'm not really enough of a caver to speak to this with much authority, but in my (American) experience cavers call themselves "cavers" and not "spelunkers". "Spelunking" seems to carry a connotation of dilettantism or amateurism.

Wikipedia: Caving#Etymology

In the 1960s, the terms spelunking and spelunker began to be considered déclassé among experienced enthusiasts. In 1985, Steve Knutson – editor of the National Speleological Society (NSS) publication American Caving Accidents – made the following distinction:

…Note that (in this case) the term 'spelunker' denotes someone untrained and unknowledgeable in current exploration techniques, and 'caver' is for those who are.

This sentiment is exemplified by bumper stickers and T-shirts displayed by some cavers: "Cavers rescue spelunkers". Nevertheless, outside the caving community, "spelunking" and "spelunkers" predominately remain neutral terms referring to the practice and practitioners, without any respect to skill level.

I have only ever heard 'caver' in Australian. (I suspect that even if it did have currency at some point, it's lengthy enough that the inevitable hypothetical hypocoristic of 'spelunkie' or 'spunkie' would eliminate it from contention.)
posted by zamboni at 1:37 PM on April 29 [2 favorites]

I used to go caving in Australia with one or two clubs, I only know the term spelunking vaguely and as a novelty. It's not used at all.

I miss it and have been caving at Buchan, including being in one party taking a route no human we were aware of had ever before taken. We found no fossils. I miss it a bit but even in my early 20's it was incredibly hard going, my body would be a month recovering these days.
posted by deadwax at 4:33 AM on April 30

I only skimmed the article, so I might have missed it, but do they have guesses on how the kangaroo got there in the first place?

did it get buried that many years ago, and now the erosion/cave formation has uncovered it?
did it get in from some other opening and die in the cave?
posted by ArgentCorvid at 8:51 AM on April 30

Further links:

A great video that shows what was required to retrieve the skeleton: Going deep underground for a 50,000 year old fossil kangaroo (Includes video of confined spaces, obviously.)
A The Conversation article on the retrieval effort, including an adorable artistic reconstruction of what the roo would have looked like
The catalog page for the skeleton at Museums Victoria

I haven't seen any speculation on the exact circumstances under which the juvenile roo ended up in the cave. It seems to be assumed that it fell and died, and if the carbon dating is correct, its age makes this particular Simosthenurus occidentalis one of the last of its kind. Poor little fella.
posted by zamboni at 9:16 AM on April 30

The skeleton has 71 per cent of its bones, which makes it the most complete fossil skeleton ever discovered in a Victorian cave.

Parsing that, I was wondering what made it a Victorian cave - was the cave discovered by explorers in the Victorian era?

Obvious to Australians though, it is a cave in the state of Victoria.
posted by rochrobbb at 3:59 AM on May 1