The Hopkins river estuary, near to the areas studied David Foster/Alamy

DID humans live in Australia 60,000 years earlier than we thought? Newly discovered shells and blackened stones suggest so, according to James Bowler at the University of Melbourne.

James Bowler University of Melbourne

In 1974, Bowler discovered the roughly 40,000-year-old Mungo Lady and Mungo Man, the oldest human remains ever found in Australia. Subsequent genetic evidence and human artefacts have since placed the arrival of humans in Australia at 60,000 years ago. But in six new papers, Bowler and his colleagues have described what they believe to be …