Twenty-one students from Koonibba Aboriginal School in South Australia have made a genuine scientific find, ABC News reports. On a field trip to Fowlers Bay on the state’s far west coast, 10-year-old Reece spotted a megafauna footprint that had never been recorded.
It was most likely left by Procoptodon, a short-faced kangaroo that could stand 2.7 metres tall, weighed around 240 kilograms and died out at least 15,000 years ago. The group also found traces of the wombat-like Diprotodon, the giant kangaroo Protemnodon and the huge flightless bird Genyornis. Palaeontologist Aaron Camens estimates the Fowlers Bay tracks are 120,000 to 130,000 years old.
The students mapped the trackways using quadrats, turning a history trip into a lesson in maths and science, and two of them presented the work at the Aboriginal STEM Congress in Adelaide. Adnyamathanha guide Kristian Coulthard said the idea that their ancestors may have walked among these creatures left the young people feeling empowered.
Source: ABC News