Crushing squeezes, muddy passages, icy waterfalls.
Abseiling over ledges into the unknown.
How far would you go for a fossil?
Illustration: Peter Trusler/Museums Victoria
Here, the river valley is peppered with shadowy entrances to underground caves.
In June this year, it will appear on display at Melbourne Museum.
In 2011, a local caving group first entered Nightshade Cave through an opening previously blocked by soil.
The kangaroo’s skull as first seen inside the cave.Photo: Parks Victoria
One of the group, Joshua Van Dyk, sighted an unusual animal skull.
Recognising its potential significance, he reported the find to Melbourne Museum.
The cave was gated shut to protect its contents and a decade passed quietly.
The fossil skeleton of S. occidentalis is 71% complete.Photo: Tim Carrafa/Museums Victoria
In 2021, I took an interest in the intriguing find.
Members of theVictorian Speleological Associationwere only too happy to assist a return to the cave.
Descending deeper, the cave transformed into tall, narrow, clean-walled rifts, full of dark recesses.
Tim Ziegler retrieving fossil bones from Nightshade Cave.Photo: Rob French/Museums Victoria
Hours passed as we circuited the passages, until a shout echoed around: found again!
We scrambled to a chimney-like chute stacked with pinned boulders, to come eye to eye with an ancient.
Behind it were more bones.
Artistic reconstruction of Simosthenurus occidentalis.Illustration: Peter Trusler/Museums Victoria
This was a single animal, not a random scattering of bones.
It felt like a fossil holy grail.
A detailed comparison to fossils in the Museums Victoria State Collection gave our skeleton its identification as Simosthenurus occidentalis.
Comprising 150 preserved bones, it is the most complete fossil skeleton found in a Victorian cave to date.
That it is a juvenile rather than adult kangaroo further distinguishes it from other examples of the species.
Radiocarbon dating by theAustralian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisationdated the skeletons burial to 49,400 years ago.
This means our S. occidentalis was among the very last of its kind.
Today, the hills of eastern Gippsland host a precious population of thebrush-tailed rock-wallaby, a vulnerable species.
Once, they shared the country with larger kin.
A key idea under investigation is whether sthenurine kangaroos walked with a striding gait,rather than hopped.
Tim Ziegler, Collection Manager, Vertebrate Palaeontology,Museums Victoria Research Institute.
This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license.
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