Divers uncovering secrets of Australia's megafauna past

November 29, 2023 3:21 PM

Divers uncovering secrets of Australia's megafauna past, concealed deep in underwater caves. Hidden in watery chambers around South Australia's Limestone Coast are fossils telling the story of a prehistoric Australian world. Researchers are determined to find them.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (3 comments total)

I am sure that is 100 % on the artist but it looks like the largest marsupial predator is also the cutest marsupial predator of them all.
posted by Ashenmote at 3:34 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just reading the ABC article earlier gave me flashbacks to the terror experienced while reading Colin Thiele's Chadwick's Chimney set on the Limestone Coast. Cave diving? Nope.

However megafauna? That is cool.
posted by pipstar at 5:04 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dr Louys said finding out how megafauna became extinct was the "big question" in Australia.

"There's two leading hypotheses about why they became extinct," he said.

"It's either humans arrived on the continent, engineered a whole heap of ecosystem change, hunted them and they became extinct, or it's environmental change through time … impacted the megafauna.

I love looking in on this controversy from the outside as a layman. I recently read End of the Megafauna: The Fate of the World's Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals by Ross D.E. MacPhee, which is about this debate with lots of beautiful artist's depictions of extinct megafauna. The author definitely favors one side over the other and gets in some slightly snarky criticisms. Archaeologist snark is its own special brand of snark.
posted by blueskies at 7:45 AM on November 30, 2023