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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."
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
OK, you're part of some primitive tribe living in the same area as a bunch of giant, flightless, and probably very tasty birds. Wouldn't you prefer hunting those huge birds instead of smaller animals that are more difficult to catch?
Since they didn't have any concept of "sustainability", it's very easy to imagine those humans contributing to the birds' extinction.
But then we figured, nah, its probably this big giant extinct bird instead...
Well, yes. When you find a picture that looks like a bird, but not quite like the emus you knew were around, you might think it's a badly drawn emu. But when you discover that the features that made you think it was badly drawn turn out to exactly match the features of some other species, you can (a) continue to assume it's a badly drawn emu that happens to, by remarkable coincidence, be badly drawn in just the right way to make it looks rather like some other species, or (b) you can now assume it's that other species.
Occam's razor is better satisfied by assume it is what it most resembles, not a badly drawn something else, with the coincidence that the badly drawn features happen to match the features of something else.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
and some scientists think that humans may have contributed to their extinction."
Well for starters, imagine the omlets you could get from that thing! Eggs were a primary food source for almost every hunter-gatherer society back in those times. It certainly wouldn't be the only example of man hunting a species to extinction.
Australia is an isolated continent, and as such it works almost like an island, with a very fragile, mutually-dependent ecosystem. If you want to get more abstract with this, one could even say that man was responsible for their extinction yet never hunted them or their eggs... maybe man for some reason hunted some specific lizard to extinction, which also happened to be their primary food source? Weird subtle interactions like that can occur on islands.
Man is good at causing these sorts of problems because as a species he's very organized. If Grok figures out that those eggs are easy to find and good eating, it doesn't take 25 generations of evolution to breed "nest hunting" behavior into the village. It takes a few months locally, maybe a few years across the entire area. Other species just can't adapt to something that fast. I don't think it's proper to "blame man" for this, it's just the next advancement in evolution. But it is unfortunate. And I think it's something that we just need to understand and accept at some level. Particularly for our behavior in the past when these subtle yet potent interactions weren't understood or respected.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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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.
of course, if we RTFA, we note that they plan on doing just that "Further studies, such as radiocarbon dating of the paint, are planned."
Bear and cougar are appropriately described as gamey. Edible and not disgusting by any means, but very stringy and certainly not something you would eat outside of necessity or novelty.
But when bison, venison, elk, etc. are described as gamey it's for one of two reasons. Reason #1 is because it was taken from a less-than ideal animal. Aged females and adult males are less tasty than their younger, relatively hormone-free relatives. That's why in domesticated animals, males destined for slaughter and sale are neutered before they start to mature sexually. Animals taken in the wild obviously are not raised in the same controlled environments. Climate or disease might lead the animals to be much leaner and wirey in some years than they normally are. And very generally speaking the older the animal is, the less tender the meat.
Reason #2 is that people don't understand how to cut or cook lean meat. People treat it same way they would beef, when that potentially could ruin the flavor. Many game processors will cut deer or elk it into thick steaks, but you really want thinner strips that can be cooked on lower heats and for shorter times to preserve the flavor. The meat is leaner and displays a lower amount of marbling than beef, and if you cook it past medium the gamey taste will become more pronounced. But if you get it from a restaurant or educate yourself on how to cook it properly, you should be able to enjoy the experience fully.
I grew up in a family that hunted and ate pretty much everything and it's amazing how badly people can ruin some of the most delicious, healthy meat in the world.