Tasmanian devils, the largest predatory marsupials living in Australia today, lived on the country's mainland tens of thousands of years ago, including alongside human settlements, according to new research published in the journal Archeology in Oceania.
Today, these sturdy animals, about the size of a small dog, known for their powerful jaws and loud screams, are preserved in the wild only in Tasmania. However, in the past, they were widespread on the continent.
Tasmanian devils belong to the family of predatory marsupials. They mainly feed on carrion, although they can also hunt small animals, their strong jaws allow them to gnaw bones. That is why the traces of their teeth on ancient bones can tell scientists where these animals lived and what they ate.
For the first time, researchers have received convincing evidence of the presence of Tasmanian devils in the Pilbara region of northwestern Australia. Earlier, their remains were found in the south of the country, in Queensland, in the Northern Territory, in the central regions of Australia and in the west, but the Pilbara remained closed in terms of archaeological data.
The scientists studied material from the Jukan-2 rock shelter, an area traditionally owned by the Puutu Kunti Kurama and Pinikura people. People used that shelter at least 47 thousand years ago, including during the last glacial maximum.
The two fragments of their teeth and lower jaw became the main proofs of the presence of devils. One of them refers to the period approximately 42,500-47,100, the other to 6,900-7,300 years ago. Thus, animals have lived in this place for tens of thousands of years, overcoming significant changes in climate and environment.
Additional evidence was found when examining more than 8,000 animal bones found at the shelter. More than a thousand of them have bite marks. The nature of the lesions on the ten fragments studied was the closest to the tracks left by Tasmanian devils.
The scientists also studied 263 fragments of bones that passed through the digestive tract of predators. The size and nature of these remains were most consistent with the impact of a large marsupial predator such as the Tasmanian devil.
Researchers speculate that these animals may have had a special relationship with human habitations. People brought carcasses of medium and large animals to the shelter and dismembered them, leaving bones and food scraps. It is on such large bones that characteristic traces were found, which are similar to the traces of the teeth of devils. This suggests that human camps served as a predictable food source for them over the millennia.
At the same time, there is no evidence that the devils found were dismembered or used for food by humans. Most likely, the animals themselves came to the settlement in search of food scraps and could have died there.
The research also offers a new hypothesis as to why Tasmanian devils disappeared from the mainland about 3,200 years ago. Around that time, dingoes became widespread in Australia. Earlier it was believed that they could drive out devils due to competition for hunting and carrion. Now scientists assume that the competition could also have taken place directly near human settlements.
If devils have taken advantage of animal remains left by humans for thousands of years, the appearance of dingoes (predators that could also use this food source) could deprive them of their usual opportunity to find food.
Scientists are still not convinced that dingoes were the reason for the disappearance of Tasmanian devils from the mainland. But the new data points to a mechanism of competition between the two predators that has been underappreciated until now.
