Kiacatoo Man: biology, archaeology and environment at the Last Glacial Maximum - ext led by Griffith Univerisity

The recent excavation of Kiacatoo Man from ancient river sands in central NSW provides an opportunity to shed new light on the nature and origins of the earliest Australians. This extremely large, robustly built, >26,000 year old fossil, may represent the closest individual to those people who left the shores of SE Asia to colonise Australia. Using state-of-the-arts earth sciences and dating techniques, this project reconstructs the glacial-age cultural and physical landscape of the Murray Basin riverine plains, characterises patterns of biological similarity among ancient remains, and explores the relative influence of climatic adaptation, gene flow, diet and human ancestry on glacial-age human morphologies.