The first people to set foot in Australia were fossil hunters

Recent archaeological research has brought to light fascinating new insights about Australia's First Peoples and their relationship with the continent's prehistoric wildlife. While it has long been debated whether these early inhabitants hunted megafauna to extinction, a significant discovery suggests they may have had a different focus: fossil collection. A team of archaeologists examined a fossilized leg bone from an extinct species of kangaroo, revealing markings that indicate an ancient effort to collect fossils rather than evidence of butchery. This finding raises questions about the role of humans in the extinction of Australia's Ice Age megafauna and suggests that the narrative surrounding their hunting practices may need reevaluation. The key piece of evidence in this inquiry is a tibia from a short-faced kangaroo, which lived between 44,500 and 55,200 years ago, as determined by uranium-series dating of the rock layer surrounding the fossil in Mammoth Cave, located in present-day Western Australia. Unlike their modern relatives, these extinct kangaroos were bipedal and supported their weight on single hoofed toes. Initially discovered in 1970, the bone exhibited a shallow, angled cut that led researchers to believe it was a result of butchering by ancient hunters. However, archaeologist Michael Archer from the University of New South Wales and his team propose an alternative hypothesis: that the First Peoples were actively retrieving fossils from this rich deposit after its discovery. This intriguing theory opens up new avenues for understanding the interactions between Aboriginal Australians and their environment, particularly in the context of the continent's megafauna extinction.