A new study has overturned the long-held belief that Indigenous Australians hunted the continent’s giant animals to extinction.
Instead, researchers suggest that Australia’s First Peoples may have valued fossils of these creatures and collected them as cultural or symbolic objects.
The findings, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, are based on a fresh analysis of two fossils from Australia, a kangaroo tibia and a giant wombat tooth, both estimated to be around 50,000 years old.
For decades, scientists believed that cut marks on the kangaroo bone found at Mammoth Cave in southwestern Australia were evidence that early humans butchered large animals for food.
But new scanning techniques reveal that the marks were made long after the animal had died, possibly even after the bone had fossilised.
According to lead researcher Dr Michael Archer from the University of New South Wales, this means the bone was not part of a hunting activity, but rather a fossil collected by early Australians as a curiosity or an object of significance.
The second fossil examined, a premolar from the extinct giant wombat Zygomaturus trilobus, was also found to have been used as a charm.
It was mounted in resin and tied with a human hair string, suggesting that it was traded and valued for its cultural meaning rather than its practical use.
Dr Archer said the evidence challenges the long-standing “overkill” hypothesis that humans rapidly hunted megafauna to extinction.
“The findings show that people and these large animals coexisted for thousands of years, and their disappearance was more likely linked to climate change than to human hunting,” he said.
Other experts agree that the results reflect what is already known about early human behaviour.
Archaeologist Dr Judith Field, who was not part of the study, noted that ancient Australians were known to use bones and shells as ornaments or ceremonial items.
The new interpretation adds a fresh perspective to Australia’s prehistoric record, portraying its First Peoples not as over-hunters, but as observant collectors and custodians of their natural environment.
