Australians (and John) Only Thread

[CaaC (John)+]

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The First Australians grew to a population of millions

The number is much more than previous estimates.

We know it is more than 60,000 years since the first people entered the continent of Sahul — the giant landmass that connected New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania when sea levels were lower than today.

But where the earliest people moved across the landscape, how fast they moved, and how many were involved, have been shrouded in mystery.

Our latest research, published today shows the establishment of populations in every part of this giant continent could have occurred in as little as 5,000 years. And the entire population of Sahul could have been as high as 6.4 million people.

This translates to more than 3 million people in the area that is now modern-day Australia, far more than any previous estimate.

The first people could have entered through what is now western New Guinea or from the now-submerged Sahul Shelf off the modern-day Kimberley (or both).

But whichever the route, entire communities of people arrived, adapted to and established deep cultural connections with the Country over 11 million square kilometres of land, from northwestern Sahul to Tasmania.

FULL REPORT

 

[Devil-Dick Willie]

Jarryd Hayne is going to prison. 

Fuck me Silverwater jail is going to have a hell of a team next season. Vattuvei, Hayne, De Balin. They'd probably beat the doggies and broncos. 

[Spike]

15 hours ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

Jarryd Hayne is going to prison. 

Fuck me Silverwater jail is going to have a hell of a team next season. Vattuvei, Hayne, De Balin. They'd probably beat the doggies and broncos. 

Cunt should have been imprisoned at the border for embarrassing Australians in the NFL

btw I know Jordies did a video on him, but have you watched Spanian’s youtube channel? The bloke is the western suburbs of Sydney made corporeal and fuck that cunt can spin a yarn. I never thought I would live to see an eloquent eshay

[CaaC (John)+]

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Exciting Australian discovery: the first complete dwarf emu egg

This small bird’s big egg sheds light on the extinct birds’ evolution.

Tucked away in a sand dune on King Island, off the southern coast of Australia, researchers have discovered the first almost complete egg of the island’s extinct dwarf emu.

The small bird (Dromaius novaehollandiae minor) barely reached a metre in height and was less than half the size and weight of the mainland emu (D. novaehollandiae). Yet the King Island egg, reported in the journal Biology Letters, retained its large size.

This was likely because evolution favoured larger, more mature emu chicks who could survive on the island, the researchers suggest. Bigger chicks would be able to forage for limited food resources and maintain a warm body temperature against the cold.

“This scenario provides an interesting evolutionary response to island size, insular population and morphological plasticity in dwarf emus,” write Julian Hume, from the UK’s Natural History Museum, and King Island historian Christian Robertson.

They note a correlation between the degree of rapid evolutionary dwarfing and island size, comparing the King Island emu with those that split off on the larger Kangaroo Island (D. n. baudinianus) and Tasmanian (D. n. diemenensis) landmasses.

Knowledge of the birds’ life histories is rather checkered as they all faced rapid extinction at the hands of settlers. “All were victims of over-hunting by human colonists,” write Hume and Robertson.

They were first recorded by Europeans following a French expedition led by Nicolas Baudin, who transported two chicks to Paris. These two survived until 1822 while their remaining brethren had become extinct by 1810.

What is known was derived from Franꞔois Péron and his questioning of a sealer who lived on the island. The new egg discovery enabled Hume and Robertson to shed more light on the enigmatic birds.

Analysing it alongside 38 eggs from mainland emus, six from Tasmania and a unique one from Kangaroo Island, they were able to estimate body sizes. Results showed the King Island emus were 42% to 44% smaller than their mainland relatives, with the others in between.

The analysis also suggested that “dwarf emus had a comparable breeding strategy to mainland emu that includes a large clutch size, synchronised hatching of young to counter predator effects and thermos-regulation in hatchings to provide warmth”.

“It was only on the southern Australian islands that limited resources resulted in rapid dwarfing and retention of a large egg.”

They say more research is warranted, but further historical insights into the dwarf emus have been thwarted by destruction of the richest fossil remains by the development of a large golf course.

“Due to their complete and rapid extinction, the true extent of these adaptations to a rapidly changing environment brought on by fluctuating sea levels is now impossible to determine.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/exciting-australian-discovery-the-first-complete-dwarf-emu-egg/

 

 

Edited May 29, 2021 by CaaC (John)

[CaaC (John)+]

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Meet Australia’s largest dinosaur

Massive plant-eater from southwest Queensland has just stomped into the record books.

Australotitan cooperensis. Credit: Vlad Konstantinov/Scott Hocknull/Eromanga Natural History Museum

Palaeontologists have just officially named and described Australia’s biggest dinosaur – Australotitan cooperensis, the southern titan.

This colossal sauropod was as long as a basketball court (25–30 metres) and up to 6.5 metres tall at the hip. This places it in the top 15 largest dinosaurs around the globe – and makes it the largest ever found in Australia.

3D reconstruction of Cooper’s humerus. Credit: Rochelle Lawrence

 

Nicknamed “Cooper”, the long-necked, plant-eating giant walked the earth around 90 million years ago. Fossils of this species were first discovered in 2007 in Eromanga in southwest Queensland, which used to be home to an inland sea and forested vegetation.

 

FULL REPORT

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Found: Oldest bilby and bandicoot fossils

Million-year-old fossils of Aussie icons found in archives of US university.

A bilby. Credit: Jacob Layocan / Getty Images.

A scientist from the Western Australian Museum has discovered the oldest known fossils of two iconic Australian animals – the bilby and the bandicoot – which had been kept for decades at the University of Washington, US.

Both the bilby and the bandicoot are small, furry, rodent-like marsupials found on mainland Australia and – in the case of the bandicoot – Papua New Guinea and parts of Indonesia.

Previously, the oldest bilby (Bulbadon warburtonae) fossil was dated to 10 million years old, but according to the new study in the journal Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology, the new specimen outpaces its predecessor by 15 million years, at almost 25 million years old. The newly discovered bandicoot (Bulungu minkinaensis), meanwhile, is a million years older than the previous record-holder at 26 million years.

Kenny Travouillon, a curator of mammalogy at the Western Australian Museum, made the discovery while visiting the US as part of a Churchill Fellowship. Judd Case, of Eastern Washington University, had invited Travouillon to examine his collection of fossilised Australian animals, collected during the 1980s and 1990s. Travouillon was able to identify two new species in the collection, which turned out to be the record-breaking marsupials.

Travouillon says the discovery is significant because it provides information about the past, particularly in terms of climate change.

“Discovering new fossil species help us understand how animals evolved through time and how well they coped with climate change,” he says.

The fossils Travouillon studied in the US once lived in what is now South Australia, near Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre towards the centre of the continent, during the Oligocene – at a time when the landscape was wetter than today.

As Australia transitioned through the wetter Miocene and then acidified to become the dry continent it is today, animals like the bilby and the bandicoot would have had to adapt to these changes or perish.

Travouillon says, “When looking at the fossils, sometimes you can tell how well they’re actually adapted to the local environments. So, for example, the new bilby tells us it was not actually adapted to having to live in sandy environments, because when it feeds it grinds its teeth down quite a bit.

“But the modern bilby does have that ability – they have very strong, reinforced teeth.”

According to Travouillon, the new species are acutely important for understanding marsupial evolution over time because specimens are incredibly scarce. The new bilby fossil is only the third ever found, and vastly outdates the other two fossils.

“It’s giving us pieces of the puzzle, to understand how these animals actually evolved over time.”

This new discovery is not the first time an iconic Australian species has been found among the cupboards and specimen cases of a foreign institution.

The fabled thylacine – perhaps better known as the Tasmanian tiger – became presumed extinct after the last captive creature, known as Benjamin, died at Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart, in 1936. This extinction, the capping-off of two million years of evolution, was a result of human intervention after the Tasmanian Government introduced a bounty for dead tigers – which were thought to steal sheep and menace the population.

Colonial scientists from Europe, and later American scientists in the 1980s and 90s, took specimens of Australian animals to their respective institutions for study at a time when Australia’s scientific capacity was limited. Since then, thylacine skulls have been popping up at institutions around the world, sometimes in contexts where they are not fully understood, so in 2005 scientists built the International Thylacine Specimen Database (ITSD) to catalogue specimens held in collections around the globe.

Fortunately for Australia, Travouillon’s new bilby and bandicoot fossils are classified as ‘type’ material – that means they are the specific specimens used to describe new species, otherwise known as holotypes – so they will be returned home to Australia. But the discoveries beg the question – how many more examples of Australia’s unique faunal evolution lie waiting in the hallways and laboratories of universities around the world, ready to be discovered?

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/found-oldest-bilby-and-bandicoot-fossils/

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2021 by CaaC (John)

[Spike]

@Devil-Dick Willie did you go to school with Emma McKeon? She is about our age

[Devil-Dick Willie]

7 hours ago, Spike said:

@Devil-Dick Willie did you go to school with Emma McKeon? She is about our age

Nah, she went to the illawarra grammar school, I went to Illawarra sports and five islands. 

[Spike]

32 minutes ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

Nah, she went to the illawarra grammar school, I went to Illawarra sports and five islands. 

You say that like I'm a local to the Illawarra area. Break it down it for me, I assume she went to the private and nice school and you're bogan scum?

[Devil-Dick Willie]

TIGS is an all female private school. 
Illawarra sports high is a dogshit bogan highschool for cunts, some of whom have scholarships based on their athletic ability. 
Five Islands is where kids who got expelled go. 

[Spike]

6 hours ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

TIGS is an all female private school. 
Illawarra sports high is a dogshit bogan highschool for cunts, some of whom have scholarships based on their athletic ability. 
Five Islands is where kids who got expelled go. 

dare i say it? based and red pilled

i was in a graduating class of 3 - fucken smashed them on the op exam

[Danny]

Anyone watched Luxe Listings Sydney on Amazon? It's so Eastern Suburbs it makes you want to rip your eyes out, yet I carry on watching 

[Toinho]

7 hours ago, Spike said:

dare i say it? based and red pilled

i was in a graduating class of 3 - fucken smashed them on the op exam

Yeh coz you’d already done year 12 5 times x 

[Spike]

3 hours ago, Toinho said:

Yeh coz you’d already done year 12 5 times x 

 Is this how you talk to your students?

[Toinho]

4 hours ago, Spike said:

 Is this how you talk to your students?

I’m very encouraging. 

[Azeem]

 

[Toinho]

On 09/08/2021 at 15:19, Khan of TF365 said:

 

Wtf is this shit. First bloke not even Aussie. 

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

Scientists amazed at 400-year-old giant coral thriving in Great Barrier Reef

© Woody Spark    -Scientists swimming over the top of the Porites coral at Goolboodi

Scientists have described their surprise at the discovery of a 400-year-old giant Porites  coral discovered in the Great Barrier Reef.

The “ exceptionally large” brown and cream coloured coral was spotted off the coast of Goolboodi (Orpheus Island), Queensland, Australia, and is estimated to be one of the oldest corals in the Great Barrier Reef – between 421 and 438 years old.

It was discovered by a group of scientists and community members participating in a marine science course earlier this year. The group determined that it was the widest known  Porites  coral in the Great Barrier Reef measuring 10.4 metres at its base, and that it was the sixth tallest, measuring 5.3 meters high. The hemispherical coral is roughly the same size as a modern double-decker bus.

Dr Adam Smith, lead author of the field note on the discovery and adjunct professor at James Cook University, said: “ It&rsquo's like a blog of apartments. It attracts other species. There&rsquo's other corals, there’s fish, there’s other animals around that use it for shelter or for feeding, so it’s pretty important for them.”

He added: “It’s a bit like finding a giant redwood tree in the middle of a botanic gardens.”

The group determined that the coral belonged to the genus  Porites, a common type of coral worldwide, with 16 species, and believe that it is either belongs to  Porites lutea (hump or pore coral) or  Porites lobata (lobe coal).

Through consultation with the traditional custodians of the area, the Manbarra Traditional Owners, it was decided that this specific coral would be named Muga dhambi, meaning big coral. The group said the name was important to communicate traditional knowledge, language and culture to future tourists, scientists and students.

It is thought that the coral went undiscovered for so long as it was located in a relatively remote, rarely visited and highly protected Marine National Park zone.

“ Over the last 20 or 30 years, no one has noticed, or observed, or thought it newsworthy enough to share photos or document, or do research on this giant coral,” Dr Smith said.

The team of citizens and scientists determined that the coral was very healthy, with 70 per cent live coral cover, as well as live coral rock and microalgae. No observations of disease, coral bleaching or recently deceased coral were recorded.

The coral’s age was estimated based on linear growth models and suggests that it has survived major oceanic disturbances including invasive species, bleaching events, severely low tides and a number of cyclones.

The field note said: “ The cumulative impact of almost 100 bleaching events and up to 80 major cyclones over a period of four centuries, plus declining nearshore water quality contextualise the high resilience of this  Porites coral”

Looking to the future, concerns for the wellbeing of the Muga dhambi coral mirror those of the Great Barrier Reef as a whole – climate change, declining water quality, over-fishing and coastal development.

But Dr Smith seems hopeful. He said that most species of coral in the Great Barrier Reef live to around 450 or 460 years, and survive cyclones and coral bleaching events.

“It’s obviously an old resilient coral,” he added.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/scientists-amazed-at-400-year-old-giant-coral-thriving-in-great-barrier-reef/ar-AANEbty?li=AAnZ9Ug#image=2

 

[Spike]

I am going home for Christmas! It is a good thing airlines still accept milage points, a $15,000 ticket for $66 ain’t bad!

[Toinho]

1 minute ago, Spike said:

I am going home for Christmas! It is a good thing airlines still accept milage points, a $15,000 ticket for $66 ain’t bad!

Is thst the cost? My lord!!!!!

Awesome lad how long for? (Try stay here?) will you have to quarantine?

[Spike]

4 hours ago, Toinho said:

Is thst the cost? My lord!!!!!

Awesome lad how long for? (Try stay here?) will you have to quarantine?

Yeah, 15k American, one way. Several months at least two plus. Yeah, 14 days as it stands. Just keen to see everyone again, very excited, I am very lucky I just need the flights to keep going and to get canceled.

I will miss the mrs but she has had me to herself long enough.

Shame that WA is closed, wouod love a weekend in Perth

[Toinho]

10 hours ago, Spike said:

Yeah, 15k American, one way. Several months at least two plus. Yeah, 14 days as it stands. Just keen to see everyone again, very excited, I am very lucky I just need the flights to keep going and to get canceled.

I will miss the mrs but she has had me to herself long enough.

Shame that WA is closed, wouod love a weekend in Perth

Fingers crossed it all works out - you never know WA could be open to QLD again by then!

Edited August 27, 2021 by Toinho

[Spike]

3 hours ago, Toinho said:

Fingers crossed it all works out - you never know WA could be open to QLD again by then!

Funny how we always get the piss taken out of us for being 'conservative' and 'australian rednecks' (especially in the papers) but here we are with two Labor states and no delta strain. Meanwhile, Devil Dick Willie is probably dead right now.

I think Anastacia would be open to a having an open border with WA but I don't think McGowan would take it, WA likes the closed border too much

[Devil-Dick Willie]

I'm still alive! Come down and see me you cunt

[Spike]

8 minutes ago, Devil-Dick Willie said:

I'm still alive! Come down and see me you cunt

Yeah let me just border hop