Discovery+of+Lake+Mungo+Skeletons

Discovery

The Mungo skeletons are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia to date. In 1969, geologist Jim Bowler of the University of Melbourne discovered the remains of Mungo Lady. He was looking in the Willandra area in south eastern New South Wales for somewhere he could extend his studies into what happened to Australia's landscape and climate in the Pleistocene epoch (between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago). Bowler was particularly drawn to Lake Mungo because the erosion of the Mungo lunette offered a chance to look into ancient layers of sediment. He found freshwater mussel shells stone tools deep down in ancient deposits. Returning in 1968, he saw what looked like burnt bones and decided to bring in some archaeologists. A year later John Mulvaney and Rhys Jones probed the bones and turned over an unmistakable human jaw. They took the remains back to the Australian National University and it was labelled Lake Mungo I and later determined to be an adult female. She became known as Mungo Woman, or Mungo Lady.  5 years later, on Februray 26 1974, he found a second complete skeleton buried 300-400 metres away from where Mungo Lady was found. The skeleton was revealed by the shifting sands of the lunette around Lake Mungo in the Willandra Lakes World Heritage area. Later that month, Lake Mungo 3 was excavated by a team from the Australian National University. The skeleton's exact sex is unknown, however, he is usually referred to as a male. For some time, the approximate age of the Mungo Man was of ongoing dispute, but has now been established at 42 000 years old. Recent controversy of Mungo Man's mitochondrial (mtDNA) has also led some researchers to challenge the Out of Africa Theory of human evolution.

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