The stories and information we come across in our line of business are amazing! Take this one we discovered while performing “routine” monitoring at a quarry.
Did Australia ever have a lion?
Well, sort of. Up until about 30,000 years ago we had the Thylacoleo carnifex – the technical name for a marsupial lion. Not really a lion, but it behaved like one.
It was the largest meat-eating mammal known to have ever existed in Australia and, in fact, one of the largest marsupial carnivores from anywhere in the world. It was about 1.5 m long, 80 cm high and weighed about 150 kg – similar in size to a jaguar. This animal was extremely robust with powerfully built jaws and very strong forelimbs. It would appear to be able to support itself on its hind legs (as kangaroos do), thus allowing its forelimbs to slash intended victims. It also appears to have climbed trees. It lived on the Australian continent from about 24 million years ago up until about 30,000 years ago.
In other words, the Aboriginal people knew this beast. Was it a source of the bunyip myth? Certainly it was found throughout Australia.
Alternatively, scientists suggest it may be related to the wombats and koalas, so could it be the source of the drop-bear myth? Is it only a myth?
Why did it die out?
We can’t be sure of course, and some people say it may have been because of over-hunting by Aboriginals. But modern science favours changing weather patterns and loss of habitat as the cause of extinction rather than human impacts. In fact, all of Australia’s megafauna (i.e. animals weighing more than about 45 kg) went extinct at about this same period.
Extremely complete skeletons of our marsupial lion have been found in the Naracoorte Cave system.
The Naracoorte Caves National Park in South Australia was inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage list in December 1994. The caves complex is located a few kilometres from the town of Naracoorte about 336 km SE of Adelaide and about 100 km north of Mt Gambier.
For about half a million years the caves acted as pitfall traps and predator dens. Animals would fall in through a hole in the ground and not be able to escape. But predators also seem to have used the caves as places of refuge.
The first fossils in the Naracoorte area were reported in 1858, but it was the discovery of the Victoria Cave in 1969 that set the stage for the World Heritage listing.
While we still do not know the extent of the cave systems, they have already yielded the most diverse and abundant deposits of Quaternary vertebrates in Australia with over 130 species within the park.
But the impressive fossils are not restricted to this cave system.
For example, in the nearby quarry situated on the outskirts of the Naracoorte town, the Komatsu cave was discovered in 2005. No prizes for guessing how the cave was discovered!
Quarrying activities were stopped to allow extensive mapping and excavations of the cave. So far some 50 vertebrate species have been identified, including the marsupial lion.
In the area large invertebrate fossils from shallow marine environments have also been found. There are snails (up to 40 cm long), corals, bivalves, and sea urchins among others.
This whole limestone area is extremely rich in fossils. While most fossils are found in sedimentary rock (sandstones and shales), they are also common in limestone. Of course the caves are also a result of the limestone environment.
But let’s not forget the other important benefit of this limestone geology – wine growing!
Some of the great Australian wine growing areas are nearby – Coonawarra, Limestone Coast, Padthaway are just the big names. There are hundreds of them. The famous wines from Burgundy are also from limestone geologies.
If you need more, the town of Penola, gateway to the Coonawarra area, is the home to one of our most famous poets (John Shaw Neilson) and the area most associated with the work of Mary MacKillop.
So, in summary, visiting Naracoorte gives you access to a World Heritage cave system, equally famous wine areas, poetry, and an important quarry. What are you waiting for?
