Megafauna fossils find by Rod Wells, Grant Gartrell in 1969 wins world heritage listing for Naracoorte caves
Professor Rod Wells and Dr Grant Gartrell crawled through a narrow opening at Naracoorte's Victoria cave to find a large chamber with a bonanza of megafauna fossils.
Image courtesy The Naracoorte Herald
On August 3, 1969, Flinders University biology professor Rod Wells and Dr Grant Gartrell found the largest collection of megafauna fossils in a single deposit on Earth. The Victoria cave discovery had it rated one of the 10 greatest fossil sites and had the Naracoorte Caves in South Australia’s southeast elevated to the world heritage list in 1994.
Wells and Gartrell went into the abandoned tourist area at the back of the Victoria Cave in 1969 as keen long-time members of the Cave Exploration Group of South Australia. With the OK from tourism officer Ern Maddock, they entered the with carbide lamps.
After picking through debris, Gartrell noticed a breeze from a pile of rocks in their path, suggesting a cavern. As Dr Gartrell went through the crawl space to get into the cavern, Wells shifted rocks until they found themselves in a vast chamber with silt over what seemed to be rocks on the ground. The rocks turned out to be the skulls of a bonanza of megafauna to an extent that shocked the scientific community.
The fossils at the Naracoorte Caves gave an insight into 500,000 years of prehistory.
Among the most famous of the many visitors to the cave was naturalist, David Attenborough, in 1976, who described the discovery as “breathtaking”. Wells set up a scientific research program at Naracoorte Caves and played a major role in obtaining world heritage listing in 1994.
For decades, Wells excavated caves at Naracoorte with students and volunteers with vision extending beyond scientific benefit to tourism and education. The save fund also led to a palaeontology laboratory at Flinders University.
Brian Clark, district ranger at Naracoorte Caves for about 15 years and widely regarded throughout Australasia as an expert in cave and karst management and world heritage, was instrumental in developing the Naracoorte caves for visitors.
Blanche Cave was the first discovered in the 1840s at what became Naracoorte Caves national park.
