Scientists recovered a remarkably well-preserved juvenile skeleton of an extinct short-faced kangaroo from a cave near Buchan in East Gippsland, Victoria. Museums Victoria says it is 71% complete, with 150 preserved bones. Its age is estimated at at least 49,400 years—the familiar “50,000-year-old” label rounds that figure. The age comes from charcoal in sediment associated with the skeleton, not from direct dating of the kangaroo’s bones.
What did scientists find?
The fossil is Simosthenurus occidentalis, an extinct short-faced kangaroo belonging to the sthenurine group. It is not a species of living kangaroo. The juvenile skeleton was found in Nightshade Cave, on Gunaikurnai Country near Buchan in East Gippsland, Victoria.
Museums Victoria reports that the skeleton is 71% complete and includes 150 preserved bones, along with a near-complete skull. Many bones remained in their original anatomical positions, supporting the interpretation that they belonged to one animal rather than a scattered collection. The museum describes fossils of this quality and completeness as extremely rare in Australia.
How old is the fossil, and how was its age estimated?
The Museums Victoria specimen record gives the fossil’s age as at least 49,400 years. The estimate is based on radiocarbon dating of charcoal fragments in closely associated sediment. It is not a direct radiocarbon date from the kangaroo bones themselves. “50,000 years old” is a rounded public-facing description of the museum’s minimum age estimate.
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The available museum account does not provide an uncertainty range or further calibration details, so the age should not be read as an exact date for the animal’s death.
How did the team recover it?
A local caver, Joshua Van Dyk, first saw the skull in Nightshade Cave in 2011. Tim Ziegler, Collection Manager for Vertebrate Palaeontology at Museums Victoria, returned to investigate in 2021. Because the fossil was vulnerable to collapse, the team had to reinforce, excavate, pack and conserve it carefully.
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Museums Victoria says the retrieval took place over two years and involved 58 hours underground for a team that included scientists, recreational cavers and Parks Victoria rangers. The cave is in Potholes Cave Reserve; its precise location has not been released.
What can the skeleton tell us about the animal?
It was still growing
Museums Victoria identified the animal as a juvenile from several features: its teeth showed limited wear, skull bones had not fused, and the ends of its limb bones had not yet joined. Ziegler estimated that it weighed about 80 kilograms when it died and might have grown half as large again. That body-mass figure is an estimate, not a measured weight.
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Its way of moving is still being investigated
The skeleton’s vertebral column and pelvis give researchers an unusual opportunity to study how this extinct kangaroo moved. Ziegler’s interpretation is that they are consistent with a striding gait rather than the hopping typical of living kangaroos. Museums Victoria presents locomotion as a subject of ongoing investigation, so striding should be treated as a proposed interpretation, not a settled result.
The museum says three-dimensional models can help researchers examine the skeleton remotely. The institutional accounts cited for this find do not identify a peer-reviewed study that definitively resolves how S. occidentalis moved.
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Why does this discovery matter?
Ziegler places short-faced kangaroos in the Australian fossil record as far back as 10–15 million years ago. He says the group became especially diverse as the climate grew drier in the later Pleistocene, from roughly 500,000 years ago. The recovered animal is considered among the last known members of its species because its sediment-based age is close to the period when the species disappeared.
Museums Victoria places that disappearance amid a major Australian megafaunal extinction pulse around 45,000 years ago and reports that up to 85% of Australia’s megafauna disappeared during that period. This individual fossil can help researchers investigate the species’ late survival and anatomy; it does not establish why the species or other megafauna went extinct.
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Sources
- Museums Victoria’s 2024 recovery announcement reports the discovery, completeness, retrieval effort and quotations.
- The Museums Victoria specimen record gives the minimum age estimate and its associated-charcoal basis.
- Tim Ziegler’s Museums Victoria account describes the excavation chronology, juvenile identification, estimated body mass and locomotion interpretation.
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