Special talk - Dr Lyndall Dawson 'The bigger the better: was this true for the marsupial megafauna?'

Lyndall, palaeontologist and author, will talk about ecological advantages that very large marsupial species may have had during the Pleistocene, and unravel the disadvantages that such a large size may have been when humans came to share their land.

Location: ANBG Theatrette

Seat reservation: https://www.trybooking.com/CAPZY

Tickets are free, but a donation on entry is greatly appreciated. All donations go to assist the Gardens.

Abstract

When aboriginal people first arrived on the Australian continent 60,000 years ago, they would have met all the marsupial animals that we are familiar with today. But they would also have shared the continent with several giant marsupial species that were all extinct about 20,000 years later.

In trying to unravel the cause of those extinctions we will look at the ecological advantages that a very large marsupial species may have had during the Pleistocene, and also address the disadvantages that such large size may have imposed on them when humans came to share their land.

Biography

Lyndall Dawson has a doctorate in vertebrate palaeontology from the University of New South Wales and is a Fellow of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. Over the past 40 years she has studied the marsupial fossils from Wellington Caves, collaborating with scientists from universities across Australia. She is the author of numerous research papers and scholarly articles on the palaeontology of Australia’s marsupial fauna. She has recently published a book Tunnels in Time: the discovery, ecology & extinction of Australia’s marsupial megafauna