r/BeAmazed • u/Dynastyisog • Dec 30 '24

History In 2006, researchers uncovered 20,000-year-old fossilized human footprints in Australia, indicating that the hunter who created them was running at roughly 37 km/h (23 mph)—the pace of a modern Olympic sprinter—while barefoot and traversing sandy terrain.

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u/killit Dec 30 '24

Or Australia had some real scary animals 20,000 years ago too

36

u/WHYohWhy___MEohMY Dec 30 '24

They have the scariest ones now! Can you imagine how crazy it was 20,000 years ago?

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u/MeyerholdsGh0st Dec 30 '24

We don’t have bears, lions, tigers, leopards, or any predators larger than a fox (other than those that live in water)… so I call BS on this one.

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u/Winter_Astronaut_550 Dec 30 '24

Didn’t we have carnivorous mega fauna kangaroos?

37

u/willy_quixote Dec 30 '24

Yep.

It's postulated that the bunyip myth stems from when Aboriginal people shared the continent with megafauna. There was a marsupial lion, diprotodon and other big nasties.

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u/RestaurantFamous2399 Dec 30 '24

It's also theorised that the bunyip came from seals that had travelled up rivers inland. The descriptions of a bunyip do resemble the features of a seal.

But knowing how old some of these stories are, it could easily be linked to some of the ancient fauna.

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u/IdaKnownbetter Dec 30 '24

I've read of them described as big bipedal man eating amphibians too? Imagine tho

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u/RestaurantFamous2399 Dec 30 '24

That sounds like a Yowie to me.

10

u/Weird-Specific-2905 Dec 30 '24

Megalania too , a goanna the size of a Saltwater crocodile

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u/Comprehensive-Mix931 Dec 30 '24

This one.

Aborigines killed them to extinction, so they must have been really, really nasty.

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u/dhuntergeo Dec 30 '24

Finally...somebody mentions the real Paleo terror of Australia.

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u/uglyspacepig Dec 31 '24 edited Dec 31 '24

Excuse me, the fucking hwhat?

Down the bunyip hole I go

JFC every day I'm reminded how fucking tame the earth we live on is now.

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u/willy_quixote Dec 31 '24

That sounds particularly untidy...

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u/IdaKnownbetter Dec 30 '24

Fkn oath. NosferatRoo!