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Ancient Cave Art May Depict Giant Bird Extinct For 40,000 Years
grrlscientist writes "Recently studied Australian Aboriginal rock art may depict a giant bird that is thought to have become extinct some 40,000 years ago, thereby making it the oldest rock painting on the island continent. The red ochre drawing was first discovered two years ago, but archaeologists were only able to confirm the finding two weeks ago, when they first visited the remote site on the Arnhem Land plateau in north Australia. 'Genyornis was a giant flightless bird that was taller and heavier than either the ostrich or emu. It had powerful legs and tiny wings, and probably closely resembled ducks and geese, its closest living relatives. ... Interestingly, Genyornis bones have been excavated in association with human artifacts in Cuddie Springs in the Australian state of New South Wales. It is likely that humans lived alongside these birds, and some scientists think that humans may have contributed to their extinction."
Jamie recalled that in the essay "A Lesson from the Old Masters," in the volume Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, Stephen Jay Gould thanks our ancestors who drew Irish Elk on cave walls for "providing the only possible evidence for a hump that would otherwise have disappeared into the maw of lost history."
Do we always have to blame man?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Hey, it's just the clueless archaeologists misinterpreting reality. What happened was that six thousand years ago, the cavemen found some faked fossils and tried to imagine how that animal might have looked like if it had actually existed.
Ezekiel 23:20
Indeed. 20k years from now people may believe an "Iron Man" or "Iron Men" lived among us.
There must most defiantly refer to the venerable Chocobo!I knew it wasn't just a game! Now where did they bury the huge swords?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocobo
I like how they claim they can use the crayon scribbles to tell the difference between an emu and this Genyomis.
From TFA:
"Initially, we thought it was another big emu," said consulting archaeologist Ben Gunn, a founding member of the Australian Rock Art Research Association who was documenting the Niwarla Gabarnmung site for the Jawoyn Association.
But then we figured, nah, its probably this big giant extinct bird instead...
So dose This mean Dinosaurs walked with man, or that Dinosaurs could draw?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
So, we think the bird went extinct 40k years ago, so we're using that to date the painting as being that old? Does that seem backwards to anyone else? How about we date the painting, then maybe we can get a better estimate of exactly when these birds went extinct?
Perhaps it's worth considering that Australia's neighbour, New Zealand, has had pretty much the largest flightless bird, at 12ft (~4m) high the Moa, hunted to extinction by the Maori. It's considered to be a cousin of the Australian Emu. Little need for wings with no mammals around for all those thousands of years..
Relatedly NZ has had by far the world's largest eagle, often depicted in indigenous culture carrying away small humans (think "children").
Who is to say that the descriptions of the bird were not passed down in legends? It seems entirely possible to me that the bird was painted after they had become extinct.
Ancient art represents ancient reality, news at 11!
Actually this provides proof of prior art for Big Bird and should invalidate all of Sesame Street's copyrights :-)
I have mod points but thought I would comment instead.
To you and the clueless fucks who modded you up to +5 Insightful: Yes, you must think you are brilliant. Of course the archeologists have no idea that cave drawings represent reality. This is an absolutely new concept to them.
It could have nothing to do with verifying that, yes indeed, this animal did go extinct in the time period they thing it did. It has nothing to do with showing the relationships the people had with the bird (was it food? was it considered to be good luck?) or how accurately the drawings represented the actual bird (based on fossilized remains). Or probably a dozen other insights that I would never think of.
But yes, you oh brilliant 13 year old on Slashdot because Mom won't let you go out and play in the rain have skewered their efforts completely.
Frankly, it is the +5 Insightful that set me off. How stupid can you be?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I've read stories of American Indian culture talking about the giant birds in the midwest states. South of me here along the Mississippi near Alton Illinois there apparently used to be a giant painting of a bird on the side of a bluff near a cave. Unfortunately the bluff was destroyed by the nearby state prison for gravel.
*DrugCheese rants*
Last post disappeared to /dev/null. Trying again.
It's perhaps worth considering that Australia's neighbour New Zealand had what's probably the world's largest flightless bird at 4m tall (12ft) , the Moa. Much like the Kiwi, it simply didn't need to keep wings as their were no mammals with which to compete. It was soon hunted to extinction by Maori settlers some 500 years ago. Of note it's considered to be a relative of the Australian Emu..
While the rest of the bird kingdom in NZ devolved their wings, the world's biggest eagle, The Haast Eagle enjoyed the easy life, often making short work of the Moa from time to time.
Now my question is, was this bird really extinct 40k years ago? Or is it an estimation? Because, maybe, they could have lived on longer than they thought.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
The young earth creationist are going to claim this one as "evidence" for a young earth.
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
First off, the scientists *somehow* come up with the magic number of 40,000 and say that is how many years ago the birds died out. Then they find a painting on a wall that *could* be one of those birds, and they assume the painting must then be 40,000 years old. Usually, the rock gets it's age from what's in it, and the fossil gets it's age from the rock. This leaves me wondering why in all the world we're still stupid enough to treat our theories like they are proven fact, when most of us don't even know where those theories (a.k.a. the dates) came from in the first place?
Interestingly the drawing shown in the article looks remarkably like some drawings and descriptions of bunyips that I've seen and read about that the indigenous Australians described to colonial settlers (When I say some drawings I mean some of the earlier drawings post-colonisation. As time progressed after European settlement the drawings and descriptions seem to have diverged from the earlier descriptions). To me it does not seem too far fetched that remnants of this creature have been passed down through the generations eventually becoming myth or legend. So, have we found the bunyip?
Australia, an island off the coast of New Zealand.
I've heard "gamey" used to describe all manner of meats (including Bison, of all things) which, once I've tried them, have turned out to be flavorful and delicious. I've come to the conclusion that "gamey" means "doesn't taste like bland chicken" thus putting it outside of the comfort zone of the McDonald's generation of "connoisseurs."
Also, one of those animals, the pig, is certainly *not* an herbivore, and coincidentally is the second most delicious of the bunch. Undomesticated pigs, who are both not Herbivores, and actually have the diet to prove it, are even more delicious than the domesticated variety in this writer's opinion.
Therefore I'm hard pressed to conclude, having never tried other predators, mammalian or fowl, that they would necessarily be less delicious than the animals I have heretofore consumed.
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