The Mungo Mega-Lake Event, Semi-Arid Australia: Non-Linear Descent into the Last Ice Age, Implications for Human Behaviour.

ABSTRACT: The Willandra Lakes complex is one of the few locations in semi-arid Australia to preserve both paleoenvironmental and Paleolithic archeological archives at high resolution. The stratigraphy of transverse lunette dunes on the lakes' downwind margins record a late Quaternary sequence of wetting and drying. Within the Willandra system, the Lake Mungo lunette is best known for its preservation of the world's oldest known ritual burials, and high densities of archeological traces documenting human adaptation to changing environmental conditions over the last 45 ka. Here we identify evidence at Lake Mungo for a previously unrecognised short-lived, very high lake filling phase at 24 ka, just prior to the Last Glacial Maximum. Mega-lake Mungo was up to 5 m deeper than preceding or subsequent lake

SUBMITTER: Fitzsimmons KE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4470511 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature