Cabinet of megafauna curiosities kickstarts journey to SA town's pre-human history
www.abc.net.au
A museum collection assessor was expecting teapots and farming equipment in a small coastal museum when she made a find that sent her back 100,000 years.
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    Historical archaeologist Christeen Schoepf was expecting to find the usual suspects during an assessment of the vast collection at the National Trust Museum in the small coastal South Australian town of Kingston SE.

    But it was a small glass cabinet at the back of the museum, in a section dedicated to the area’s natural history, that caught her eye.

    It’s hard to imagine, looking at the towns, forestry plantations, vineyards and paddocks in the region now, but 100,000 years ago the Limestone Coast was vast wetlands broken up by islands of forest and grassland, as well as the now-iconic caves.

    South Australian Museum palaeontologist Liz Reed says Naracoorte bone deposits reveal 94 mammal species once called the area home, of which about 54 per cent have disappeared since European colonisation.

    Ms Schoepf said she wants to negotiate with the SA Museum to exhibit more of the region’s natural history, including the collection found at Blackford.

    “The Kingston Museum is taking on a new shape through Christeen and I hope by the time she’s finished we’ll be able to tell a lot more stories in a far more efficient manner,” he said.

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