Nexus - 0101 - New Times Magazine-pages

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by Nissa 7 Far back and beyond the Dreamtime, we reach to find the roots of this continent in the beginning of Time, the beginning of the Universe. There are many clues to the changing face of land masses today, many of them quite extraordinary and puzzling. For example, the remains of freshwater dolphins, flamingoes and vast rainforests have been found in the heart of the desert in Australia. | Marsupials, gumtrees and wattle dominate here like nowhere else on Earth. Australian biological history began billions of years ago. The antiquity of the continent's raw materials became evident recently when geologists in Western Australia discovered some zircon crystals. The rocks in which they were imbedded were dated at 3.6 billion years, but the crystals are believed to be 4.3 billion years old; the most ancient known on Earth. Also found in Western Australia are the world's oldest fossil reefs or stromatolites, dated at 3.5 billion years, a point in time when the crust and oceans were still hot and the atmosphere was made of toxic gases with hardly any oxygen Much of the landscape we see in Australia today probably locks largely as it did millions of years ago, giving us some of the oldest landforms in’ the world. Keconstructions of the changing Guinea. Until recently the oldest known human remains in Australia come from Lake Mungo, again inWestern Australia, carbon-dated at 37,000 to 40,000 years old. These are not the oldest expected to be found, as evidence suggests man was on the continent long before this (evidence of burning-off indicates humans may “have been here 130,000 years ago). In a Penrith quarry this year remains of an Aboriginal settlement were discovered and dated at 47,000 years old; the oldest discovered human settlement on Earth. Recent research in North Queensland shows a marked change in flora about 45,000 years ago from a dominence of tree-ferns and casuarinas to the more fire-resistant eucalypts and acacias. More than this, there was a rapid subsequent disappearence of large animals “weighing 60 kilograms or more. f The arrival of humans has been blamed on the dramatic “prehistoric overkill’ of mass extinction of the giant mammals or alternatively, the extinctions could be pinpointed to the inability of the large mammals to withstand the stress of climatic changes. Studies at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies suggest that the Australian extinctions relate to an exceptionally a , dry climate approximately 15,000 to face of Australia have been pieced 25,000 years ago. The arid core of the together from fossils, landforms, ] links with the monotremes are the} continent expanded and the water magnetic alignments in rocks and platypus and echidna. supply diminished making it in wildlife distribution. The Much of the continent was | sufficient to support the giant transformation is quite dramatic and | covered in great tracts of forest with | creatures. Both theories are just that, incorporates changing atmosphere, } abundant fresh water, allowing a great | with archacologists and geologists ice ages, erosion = and_ climatic menagerie of animals to evolve. But as | hotly debating the cause of mass changes. Australia was once cut in }the continent broke away from extinction. two by an ocean. We have been | Gondwanaland (incorporating would- One remarkable thing to emerge submerged and have emerged from | be South America, Africa, India, | is that the bones of extinct the sea. Sydney lay metres under Madagascar, New Zealand and marsupials have never been found in water and was situated iens of | Antartica) about 100 million years | the same layers of sediment that have kilometres from the coast, the Blue ago, it started to drift slowly north, J yielded human artefacts. But the Mountains as yet unformed. The changing climatic conditions forcing evidence shows that there was continent has been witness to the | gora and fauna to adapt over millions } definitely a period of about 30,000 Earth's cooling, the evolution of plants- of years to a hotter, drier climate. years when humans and giant from simple club mosses, conifers and The most interesting question | marsupials co-existed in Australia. giant tree ferns to the flowering plants, | that arises is when did humans arrive Certainly the evidence is up the ladder of evolution to | on the now independant continent of | pointing more and more to Australia amphibians, reptiles, mammals and | Australiaand how did they get here? being one of the original genetic pools birds. The oldest mammal fossil found The Aborigines claim they | of flora and fauna and the oldest so farin Australia at Lightning Ridge | evolved in Australia, but few | landmass on Earth- maybe we are the was a snubby-beaked monotreme anthropologists would agree. Most fabled lost continent of Mu - but (egg-laying mammal), 100 million | believe they have origins in South- ] certainly we have our roots in the years old. The world’s last remaining | East Asia and perhaps Papua New | creation of the Earth. Nexus New Times 7 back North in of the Nexus New Times