RESEARCH ARTICLE The Mungo Mega-Lake Event, Semi-Arid Australia: Non-Linear Descent into the Last Ice Age, Implications for Human Behaviour Kathryn E. Fitzsimmons1*, Nicola Stern2, Colin V. Murray-Wallace3, William Truscott2, Cornel Pop1 1 Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D- 04103 Leipzig, Germany, 2 Archaeology Program, La Trobe University, Bundoora VIC 3086, Australia, 3 School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong NSW 2522, Australia *
[email protected] Abstract The Willandra Lakes complex is one of the few locations in semi-arid Australia to preserve OPEN ACCESS both paleoenvironmental and Paleolithic archeological archives at high resolution. The stra- Citation: Fitzsimmons KE, Stern N, Murray-Wallace tigraphy of transverse lunette dunes on the lakes’ downwind margins record a late Quater- CV, Truscott W, Pop C (2015) The Mungo Mega-Lake nary sequence of wetting and drying. Within the Willandra system, the Lake Mungo lunette Event, Semi-Arid Australia: Non-Linear Descent into is best known for its preservation of the world’s oldest known ritual burials, and high densi- the Last Ice Age, Implications for Human Behaviour. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127008. doi:10.1371/journal. ties of archeological traces documenting human adaptation to changing environmental pone.0127008 conditions over the last 45 ka. Here we identify evidence at Lake Mungo for a previously Academic Editor: Nuno Bicho, Universidade do unrecognised short-lived, very high lake filling phase at 24 ka, just prior to the Last Glacial Algarve, PORTUGAL Maximum. Mega-lake Mungo was up to 5 m deeper than preceding or subsequent lake full Received: February 20, 2015 events and represented a lake volume increase of almost 250%.