Searching for megafauna clues in remote Australia to solve an ancient true crime mystery

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Megafauna News

Fossils,Dinosaurs,Catalyst

From filming in some of the most remote and inhospitable areas of Australia, to working with an A-list Hollywood actor, this is how the ABC Science team investigated what killed our ancient megafauna.

Australia has a well-deserved reputation for being home to an abundance of dangerous animals and insects, but rewind, say, 50,000 years ago and our lands were arguably deadlier.the team set out to find some of the answers to why the giants that lived here for millions of years disappeared.

This mass extinction took place when the world was in the grip of an ice age and, while Australia largely remained free of glaciation during that time, the climate was rapidly drying. "What this means is that we see, rather than just one or two bones, complete skeletons preserved where the animal got stuck."And because they're stuck in the mud, they're essentially partly buried as they die, which means that the fossilisation detail is much higher.But finding clues here is a race against the clock.

"To learn that there are preserved striding trackways of short-faced kangaroos in the Lake Eyre Basin in South Australia, that's incredible," he said."People wait lifetimes to see evidence like this. We see proof with our own eyes because we can walk in their footsteps."Over the coming weeks and months, our investigation saw the crew travel to 18 locations.

Once those had been checked by the scientists, musculature and skin were added in a process called sculpting. He's based in New York and so, with the help of a Zoom link for the Australian team to patch in and a fortuitous holiday to NYC of one of the show's editors, Philippa Rowlands — we recorded history.Think you know your diprotodon from your procoptodon? Take our mega megafauna quiz to find outAs Julian Assange languished in a British prison, Anthony Albanese passed a message to his lawyers that would prove a turning pointWe're richer than everyone else.

 

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