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PALAEONTOLOGY:
- PREHISTORIC RANGE OF THE THYLACINE -
(page 5)
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Archaeological evidence

    The first wave of Stone Age humans reached Australia by 40,000 or more years ago.  The thylacine is an animal that the ancient people of Australia were obviously quite familiar with, as the species was often portrayed in their rock art, examples of which are known from various areas of the country.

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    Accurate Aboriginal pictographs of thylacines were found by Wright (1972) in caves in the Pilbara near Mt. Edgar Station, Juna Downs and Tom Price Station.  The animal represented in the pictograph Wright discovered at Abydos Station could be of either a thylacine or numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus).  This drawing was older than the others, and had been created using an engraving technique instead of by pecking.  It is unlikely that the stripes shown in this example of rock art were simply a stylized portrayal of body contour, since they were absent from the other species depicted.

    A variety of thylacine pictographs are known from

Aboriginal rock art of thylacine - Kakadu National Park, NT
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An Aboriginal pictograph of what appears to be an adult thylacine with young, from Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory.  The image is estimated to be some 6000 years old.
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Arnhem Land (Northern Territory) and its surroundings.  An exposed vertical wall was discovered by E. J. Brandl on the Upper East Alligator River which bears what appears to be a very slender thylacine (Brandl 1972).  At Deaf Adder Creek, sheltered beneath a nine-metre sandstone rock, was a 35 cm (approx. 13.78 in.) figure of a thylacine, painted in red (ibid).  Further along the creek was found a portrait of a 35 cm striped animal with an elongated tail and forelegs much longer than its
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Aboriginal rock art of thylacine - Arnhem Land, NT
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Aboriginal pictograph of a thylacine from Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.
hindlegs.  An additional red ochre painting, measuring 110 cm (approx. 43.30 in.) was found in an extremely inaccessible location at the Caldwell River Crossing.  Local Aboriginals were interviewed, but none were able to identify the subjects even from legends (ibid).  According to later press reports, (Anon. 1974 a, b), ten comparable paintings, including one of a female feeding her young, have been found in a valley in the Mt Brockman massif of Kakadu National Park by Messrs. Chaloupka and Woerle, who possibly were the first non-Aboriginals to enter the valley.

    To view additional examples of the thylacine as illustrated in ancient Australian pictographs, please see the subsection The Thylacine in Aboriginal Rock Art.

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Acknowledgement: This subsection of the Thylacine Museum has been referenced (in part) from: SMITH, M., 1982. Review of the Thylacine (Marsupialia, Thylacinidae). In "Carnivorous Marsupials - Vol. 1" (Ed. M. Archer). Roy. Zool. Soc. N.S.W.: Sydney. pp. 237-53.
References
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