It's great to be back out on the Nullarbor Plain, after three days travelling and setting up, for our first expedition in two and a half years. Most of the crew were participants in the last trip, which was half cave palaeontology and half a battle against the howling wind and rain. We haven't made the mistake of camping in the middle of a clay pan this time... We learnt a lot about logistics and the fossil site on that trip and a great advantage of having much the same crew is that everyone knows their roles. Consequently, everything got off to a great start this morning with Paul guiding everyone on their abseil into the cave safely, Carey organising the camp, and Grant and I refining our underground plan of attack for the next two weeks. After lowering all of the gear down the 20 metre drop into the cave we resumed excavating, Roger, Nick and me in Pit B and Grant and Aidan in Pit A.
Within an hour Grant and I decided we would up stumps on Pit B at the end of today and begin a new excavation closer to the cave entrance, where a large number of bones have been found on the cave floor and where augering on the previous trip had shown the sediment was over two metres deep. No breathtaking discoveries today but a couple of very good ones. Grant found a partial skull of what looks like the new species of Notamacropus from southern Australia that James and I are currently describing. Unfortunately, the teeth are on the underside so we can't be sure until it's completely excavated. We'll have to be patient and wait until tomorrow. Aidan has exposed a humerus (upper arm bone) of a giant kangaroo called Protemnodon. It's in excellent condition. I'm really keen to start on Pit C tomorrow. This wasn't part of the original excavation plan; I'd pretty much intended to keep working on expanding Pit B outward to increase our sample size of fossils from the lower layers (>780,000 years old), which is much lower than for the upper layers (200,000–780,000 years old). However, planning in the lab is one thing; sometimes you really need to be in the cave to work out what will be the most profitable use of our limited time and resources.
We climbed out of the cave around 7 pm after nine straight hours underground looking forward to dinner and a beer. As I write we're all huddled around the campfire laughing at poor old Grant who's just melted the sole of his shoe by putting it too close to the fire, contented with a belly full of Carey's awesome tucker under a sky full of stars (veges only again much to the meat-lovers' disdain), wondering about what awesome fossils we'll find over the next two weeks...this is the life.
Nullarbor Expedition Update
Gavin Prideaux
It's great to be back out on the Nullarbor Plain, after three days travelling and setting up, for our first expedition in two and a half years. Most of the crew were participants in the last trip, which was half cave palaeontology and half a battle against the howling wind and rain. We haven't made the mistake of camping in the middle of a clay pan this time... We learnt a lot about logistics and the fossil site on that trip and a great advantage of having much the same crew is that everyone knows their roles. Consequently, everything got off to a great start this morning with Paul guiding everyone on their abseil into the cave safely, Carey organising the camp, and Grant and I refining our underground plan of attack for the next two weeks. After lowering all of the gear down the 20 metre drop into the cave we resumed excavating, Roger, Nick and me in Pit B and Grant and Aidan in Pit A.
Within an hour Grant and I decided we would up stumps on Pit B at the end of today and begin a new excavation closer to the cave entrance, where a large number of bones have been found on the cave floor and where augering on the previous trip had shown the sediment was over two metres deep. No breathtaking discoveries today but a couple of very good ones. Grant found a partial skull of what looks like the new species of Notamacropus from southern Australia that James and I are currently describing. Unfortunately, the teeth are on the underside so we can't be sure until it's completely excavated. We'll have to be patient and wait until tomorrow. Aidan has exposed a humerus (upper arm bone) of a giant kangaroo called Protemnodon. It's in excellent condition. I'm really keen to start on Pit C tomorrow. This wasn't part of the original excavation plan; I'd pretty much intended to keep working on expanding Pit B outward to increase our sample size of fossils from the lower layers (>780,000 years old), which is much lower than for the upper layers (200,000–780,000 years old). However, planning in the lab is one thing; sometimes you really need to be in the cave to work out what will be the most profitable use of our limited time and resources.
We climbed out of the cave around 7 pm after nine straight hours underground looking forward to dinner and a beer. As I write we're all huddled around the campfire laughing at poor old Grant who's just melted the sole of his shoe by putting it too close to the fire, contented with a belly full of Carey's awesome tucker under a sky full of stars (veges only again much to the meat-lovers' disdain), wondering about what awesome fossils we'll find over the next two weeks...this is the life.