Special talk - Dr Judith Field ‘Last of Megafauna? Unravelling the debates around the Late Pleistocene Faunal Extinctions'

Associate Professor Judith Field, from University of NSW, will look at some of these animals individually to better understand their behaviour, diets and their place in the Australian environment and discuss why they may have been susceptible to a changing landscape climate - and possibly a new predator.

Location: ANBG Theatrette

Bookings: Reserve your place at https://www.trybooking.com/CAIGF

Tickets are free, but a donation on entry is greatly appreciated. All donations go to assist the Gardens.

Abstract

The decline and disappearance of the Australian Megafauna has been the subject of debate for over a century since the discovery of the bones of a giant flightless bird at Wellington caves in the 1830s. Since then both climate change and humans have been invoked as primary extinction drivers yet there is no consensus on the process or timing of these events.  What is indisputable is that this suite of animals is no longer present on the landscape, most disappearing within the last 100,000 years. Many of these animals were very large, such as the 3.5 tonne Diprotodon, while others were incredibly specialised, such as Thylacoleo (Marsupial Lion). We will look at these animals individually to better understand their behaviour, diets and their place in the Australian environment and explore why they may have been susceptible to a changing landscape climate and possibly a new predator.

Biography

Associate Professor Judith Field is an Australian prehistoric archaeologist at the University of New South Wales, who spent much of her career excavating at the Cuddie Springs site in northwestern NSW.  It is currently the only site where evidence for co-existence of humans and megafauna is found on the Australian continent, and has kept her at the centre of extinction debates for over 20 years. Her broad interests have involved research projects in Papua New Guinea, the Kimberley, the rainforests of Far North Queensland and the Florentine Valley in Tasmania. An interest in exploitation and use of starchy plant foods and grinding stones - beginning at Cuddie Springs - has also led to microscope based explorations of the past.