One of Australia’s most complete fossils to date has emerged from a labyrinth in regional Victoria.
In 2011, recreational caver Joshua van Dyk squeezed into a tiny gap in the ground barely bigger than a wombat hole in Victoria’s east Gippsland, entering an unexplored labyrinth that would come to be named Nightshade Cave.
He didn’t know it then, but the skull belonged to a 50,000-year-old marsupial creature that had left behind one of the most complete fossil skeletons ever discovered in Australia. Paleontologist Tim Ziegler recovering the ancient short-faced kangaroo skeleton from NIghtshade Cave during a 60-hour mission.Most fossils from the time are recovered from ancient billabongs or river beds and are often incomplete, scattered by the movement of water. “Caves are a different story altogether,” Ziegler said. “They’re like a time machine.”
“I was often upside down, in the dark with a headlight on, trying to do the paleontological equivalent of open-heart surgery,” he said.Climbing back through the cave with a backpack full of tissue-cushioned bones, he said, felt like going abseiling with a newborn baby.
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