At least 17,000 years of coexistence: Modern humans and megafauna at the Willandra Lakes, South-Eastern Australia

- The question of how the Australian megafauna became extinct has been one of the most fiercely debated in Australian archaeology.
- The dominant hypothesis as reported in much of the press is that the megafauna became extinct through human agency shortly after the arrival of the First Australians some 50,000 years ago.
- We show that there is at least 17,000 years of overlap between people and megafauna at one of Australia's richest archaeological landscape.
- The research undermines the rapid kill hypothesis and suggests that megafauna extinction was likely the results of a combination of factors.
- It is clear that much more research is required if we are to understand how the Australian megafauna became extinct.

It has been argued that globally the extinction of many species of megafauna appears to coincide with the dispersal of modern humans, however, with the refinement of age ranges on megafauna specimens it has been revealed that many extinctions are in fact time-transgressive. This appears to be the case in Europe and Asia, and probably also the Americas. The argument over what mechanism was responsible for megafauna extinction in Australia, however, remains heavily contested. This contribution investigates the age of a single articulated megafauna specimen of Zygomaturus trilobus from the Willandra Lakes. The Willandra is unique in that it is the only Australian landscape with evidence for a) continual occupation by Aboriginal people from 50,000 years ago and b) the presence of megafauna. As people have occupied the Willandra since the period of initial colonisation, establishing the age range of this specimen provides a good test to determine if people drove megafauna into extinction soon after their arrival, or whether megafauna and people co-existed for a long period of time. Two independent dating techniques show that the fossil has a maximum age range based on OSL of 33.3-36.7kya and a minimum age range based on U-series at 32.4 ± 0.5kya. This specimen represents the youngest example of extinct megafauna reliably dated in Australia. Regardless of whether one accepts a short (47.5kya) or long (55kya) chronology for Aboriginal occupation of Australia, it would now appear that the second largest marsupial to ever exist was still present for a considerable time after the first arrival of Aboriginal people.