Australia’s First Peoples: hunters of extinct megafauna or Australia’s first fossil collectors

Claims have been made about the presumed role of Australia’s First Peoples in the extinction of some of Australia’s megafauna. However, evidence used to suggest butchering may instead demonstrate fossil collection by Australia’s First Peoples. Using micro-computed tomography scanning and microscopic wear analysis, we analysed a cut sthenurine tibia from Mammoth Cave, Western Australia, previously interpreted as evidence of butchering. Our analyses suggest the cut occurred long after death and probably after fossilization. We investigated the possibility of long-distance transportation of a premolar of Zygomaturus trilobus gifted by First Peoples in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. This species is otherwise unknown from northern Australia but common in southern Australia. Using X-ray fluorescence, we tested the potential provenance of the premolar and found that it was elementally indistinguishable from Mammoth Cave premolars. These results suggest that First Peoples may have collected fossils in southern Australia before carrying them to the Kimberley region. A review of other recent claims of killing and/or butchering of extinct megafaunal species suggests they too may have been collected as fossils. We argue that fossils were valued, being collected and transported long distances by the First Peoples in Australia in all probability thousands of years before Europeans arrived on this continent.