Latest news with #Taungurung
SBS Australia
18-07-2025
- SBS Australia
Two men arrested for vandalism of significant Taungurung site
Two men have been arrested for vandalising a culturally significant site in Victoria's Alpine National Park. The rockface at Paradise Falls on Taungurung Country was found damaged in May. "The rockface, at the base of the falls, has been spray-painted with graffiti. The damage was approximately 10 metres wide and two metres high," Victorian Police said. On Wednesday, a 24-year-old man from Rosebud was charged with criminal damage and breaching Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Laws. He was bailed to face Wangaratta Magistrates' Court in late September. A 25-year-old Hastings man was also arrested and had his home searched. Victorian police said he will be charged "at a later date with the same offences". The Tarungurung Land and Waters Council (TLaWC) issued a statement saying they'll work with Parks Victoria to remove the graffiti in a process that would focus on cultural sensitivity, healing and engagement with the Taungurung community. "TLaWC continues to work with Victoria Police and First Peoples State Relations during this investigation," they said. The organisation said it wouldn't be commenting further, instead focusing on "healing Country and supporting community".
ABC News
17-07-2025
- ABC News
Two men arrested after graffiti found at culturally significant Paradise Falls
Two men have been arrested after a rock face was vandalised and spray painted with graffiti at Paradise Falls in Victoria's Alpine National Park. Paradise Falls and the surrounding area is on located on Taungurung Country, about three-and-a-half hours north of Melbourne. The graffiti was discovered on a rock face at the culturally significant site on May 12. On Wednesday, police in Melbourne arrested and charged a 24-year-old Rosebud man with criminal damage, and for breaching laws under Victoria's Aboriginal Heritage Act that protect significant sites. The man was bailed to appear at the Wangaratta Magistrates Court in September. A 25-year-old man from Hastings was also arrested during a search warrant at his home on Wednesday, and police said he would be charged with the same offences at a later time. The graffiti at the base of the waterfall is yet to be removed due to the ongoing police investigation, which included specialist graffiti analysts. The Taungurung Land & Waters Council and Parks Victoria have been contacted for comment.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Found Footprints That Push Humanity's Timeline Back By 40 Million Years
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn in this story: The common ancestor of all tetrapods (including humans) was previously thought to have emerged at the dawn of the Carboniferous period. Fossilized tracks from an early reptile are now the oldest known reptilian tracks, meaning the tetrapod ancestor most likely appeared earlier, during the Devonian period. These tracks were made by clawed feet—a characteristic of amniotes. Their appearance pushes back amniotes evolution by 35-40 million years. Between 359 and 350 million years ago, it rained. Lizard-like creatures crawled through the mud in what was once Gondwana (but is now Australia), leaving behind footprints that became frozen in time, fossilizing as mud turned to stone over the aeons. These tracks would later be unearthed in an excavation that questioned how far back in time our tetrapod ancestors walked on land. Tetrapods (meaning 'four legs' in Greek) include all amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, and are thought to originate from lobe-finned fish that made their way out of primeval seas on fins that functioned as primitive legs. Humans are tetrapods, and like all tetrapods (except amphibians), we are also amniotes, with eggs that protect developing embryos in amniotic sacs. Amniotes are thought to have diverged from amphibians at the dawn of the Carboniferous period, about 355 million years ago. Mammals would diverge from reptiles and birds only 30 million years later. The fossil footprints were discovered at the edge of an paleontological site in eastern Victoria known as Broken River (or Berrepit in Taungurung, the language spoken by local indigenous people). Whatever creature left imprints of its feet on the riverbank provides the first evidence of terrestrial life in this area, and claw marks from the footprints suggest it was an amniote—except that amniotes weren't supposed to have evolved so early in the Carboniferous period. 'This pushes back the likely origin of crown-group amniotes by at least 35-40 million years,' the Australian and Swedish team of researchers who excavated at the Berrepit site said in a study recently published in the journal Nature. '[Amniotes] cannot be much younger than the Devonian/Carboniferous boundary, and [the origin of tetrapods] must be located deep within the Devonian.' Before this find, the oldest known amniote fossils were tracks from Notalacerta and the bones of Hylonomus. Both species were sauropsids—part of a larger group of extant and extinct reptiles and birds that presumably lived during the late Carboniferous. The common ancestor of all tetrapods was thought to have emerged in the earliest years of the Carboniferous, but that changed when this team of experts came upon the mysterious tetrapod footsteps from Berrepit. They now think that the tetrapod ancestor appeared during the Devonian, and that amniotes began to diverge from them about 395 million years ago, 35 to 40 million years earlier than previously thought. It is evident that the footsteps came not just from a tetrapod, but from an amniote because almost all amniotes have claws or nails. Claw marks scratched the wet earth after a short rain shower, and there is no evidence of a body or tail dragged across the ground. While it is impossible to know what this animal actually looked like, the spacing between forefeet and hind feet indicates that it was about 17 cm (about 6.7 inches) from shoulder to hip, with neck, head, and tail lengths unknown. Using a modern water monitor as a proxy, the researchers determined it must have been about 80 cm (about 31.5 inches) total in length. Something else could possibly be demystified by the footprints—the end-Devonian mass extinction was thought to have such a catastrophic impact, it could explain why tetrapods don't appear in the fossil record for another 20 million years. Tetrapods dating to after the gap are much more diverse and advanced than their pre-gap predecessors. Early Carboniferous sauropsid tracks mean that tetrapods must have been branching out from their common ancestor sometime during the Devonian, meaning that the mass extinction had little effect on the evolution of tetrapods. 'The [fossil footprints] have a disproportionate impact on our understanding of early tetrapod evolution because of their combination of diagnostic amniote characteristics and early, securely constrained date,' the researchers said. 'They demonstrate, once more, the extraordinary importance of happenstance and serendipity in the study of severely under-sampled parts of the fossil record.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Fossil footprints found in Australia the oldest evidence of amniotes
Fossilised footprints found in Australia provide the oldest evidence for reptiles on Earth, a discovery that suggests the group evolved in the southern rather than the northern hemisphere, and some 35-40 million years earlier than thought. A 35cm trackway of clawed footprints found in sandstone on Taungurung country, near Mansfield in eastern Victoria, have been dated to between 354 and 358m years old in a paper published in Nature, making them the oldest on record. The previously oldest fossil records, from Europe and North America, are estimated at 318m years old
The Guardian
08-04-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Bogong moths and the traditional owners scaling mountains to track them
Deberra, as the insects are known in the Taungurung language, are a vital food source for animals across Victoria's alpine country — so their rapid decline has implications for the entire ecosystem. The bogong moth is one of the more than 2,000 Australian species listed as being under threat in what scientists are calling an extinction crisis
