A kangaroo painted more than 17,000 years ago has been identified as the oldest piece of cave art in Australia. The lifesize image is on the ceiling of a rock shelter in Balanggarra country in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
New techniques were used to reveal its place in the cave art canon, with the analysis also shedding shed light on how the same naturalistic style remained in use for 4,000 years.
The organic matter needed for radiocarbon dating can be elusive in Aboriginal rock paintings, so researchers from Melbourne University turned to the cave walls and found that they included the remnants of many thousands of fossilised mud wasp nests, which could be dated.
The technique was used to date images from several
