New research from Juukan Gorge on Puutu Kunti Kurrama Country provides the first unequivocal evidence of Tasmanian devils in the Pilbara.
The research is published in Archeology in Oceania.
UNSW researchers and Traditional Owners identified two ancient devil bones from Juukan 2 rockshelter: part of a jaw dating to between 6900 and 7300 years ago, and part of a tooth from deposits between about 42,500 and 47,100 years old.
These, combined with thousands of other animal and human remains, suggest devils scavenged around human camps for thousands of years before dying out on the Australian mainland.
“This discovery shows just how ecologically adaptable Tasmanian devils were,” study lead author UNSW palaeontologist Dr Tim Churchill said.
“They thrived in the arid, rocky gorges of the Pilbara and persisted there through major climatic upheavals, including the Last Glacial Maximum.”
The site reveals a pattern of devil-like damage to animal bones found among thousands of other archaeological remains including stone artefacts, campfires, shell beads, bone tools and even a belt made from human hair.
Researchers also examined more than 8000 bones from the site, many of which had been chewed or digested by carnivores, with tooth marks most closely matching those made by Tasmanian devils.
These traces occur across deposits spanning much of Juukan 2’s 47,000-year history, suggesting devils repeatedly scavenged at the rockshelter through major environmental changes, including the severe dry period during the last Ice Age.
Many of the larger animal bones at the site, including those of kangaroos and goannas, were brought there by people and may later have been scavenged by devils, suggesting a long-running relationship between humans and this once-widespread marsupial.
The researchers said the arrival of dingoes may have disrupted this relationship by cutting devils off from a predictable source of food, potentially contributing to their extinction from mainland Australia (alongside thylacines) about 3200 years ago.
“Dingoes have long been blamed for driving mainland devils extinct by competing for carrion, and perhaps even killing them directly,” Dr Churchill said.
“What’s been largely overlooked is competition for another resource: access to people and the food scraps around human camps.”
Juukan Gorge offers a rare record of a landscape shared by people, devils and other scavengers over thousands of generations—a record that was nearly lost when mining giant Rio Tinto blasted the site in 2020.
The team said sites like these must be protected before evidence of our earliest human stories is lost forever.
