Stoney Snapshot

The world's largest collection of human fossil footprints have been found in a national park in western New South Wales.

The prints are 19,000 to 23,000-years-old and date back to the Ice Age.

They were found in the Mungo National Park at Willandra and the site contains more than 450 well preserved footprints of men, women and children.

New South Wales Environment Minister Bob Debus says the site shows a large group of people walking and interacting with one another.

"We see children running between the tracks of their parents, the children running in meandering circles as their parents travel in direct lines," he said.

"It's a most extraordinary snapshot of a moment or several moments in the life of Aboriginal people living on the edge of the lake in western New South Wales 20,000 years ago.

From ABC News Online

Exciting stuff. Mungo National Park is the location of several ancient human finds, most famously "Mungo Man" aka Mungo III, whose age has been bickered over but is now agreed (from what I can ascertain) to be around 40 000 years old, and "Mungo Lady" aka Mungo I, the oldest known cremation, coming in at around the same age.

The dating of the Mungo finds is -- as with everything in the field -- highly controversial; some feel that the fact that Mungo III has no traces of the mitochondrial DNA of the ancient African finds raises serious questions about the Out of Africa theory. Others say, just as vehemently, that this is absolute codswallop. My sympathies lie with the former theory, but that loyalty comes from an emotional basis rather than one of research and information, so I generally tend to keep that to myself. Either way, it's compelling reading, and all the more so because it's based right here in Australia.

Incidentally, the Mungo remains were returned to the traditional owners of the Willandra region. They cooperated closely on the project, and as the discoverer of the remains, Professor Jim Bowler, noted, "This represents an important new phase in the collaboration between science and traditional owners. Science and the Australian community owe them a special debt of gratitude."

Further reading:

New ages for human occupation and climate change at Lake Mungo, Australia
University of New England

Mungo Man's DNA shakes the Homo family tree
University of New England

World's oldest burial redated to 40 000 years
ABC Science Online

Lake Mungo 3
University of New England

Mitochondrial DNA sequences in ancient Australians: Implications for modern human origin Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies and John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, et al.

Out of Africa vs Multiregionalism
stephenjaygould.org