For months, the Australian Academy of Science and mRNA experts have urged the Australian government to help develop a domestic mRNA manufacturing capability. That capability has not been developed.
In February, the academy used a pre-budget submission to warn Australia and the region would be vulnerable to supply limitations without the ability to produce mRNA vaccines.
Associate professor Archa Fox, a leading mRNA expert with the University of Western Australia, said it was frustrating that the country was yet to develop mRNA manufacturing capability.
But she said it was not too late.
Fox said it was difficult to be too critical of government, given the uncertainty around the various vaccine candidates – particularly the relatively new RNA vaccine technologies – in the early stages of the pandemic.
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Bone tools found in Riwi Cave in the Kimberley, WA. Credit: Michelle Langley
New research has reappraised the age of bone artefacts found in a famous Kimberley cave site as being more than 35,000 years old, making them among the oldest bone tools found in Australia.
Published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, the team of scientists from across Australia analysed eight bone artefacts from Riwi Cave in Mimbi country in south-central Kimberley, Western Australia.
Dr Michelle Langley from ARCHE.
Four of the bone artefacts were found in layers that dating to between 35,000 and 46,000 years ago, making them some of the oldest bone tools in Australia. Previously, the oldest bone artefact from Carpenter’s Gap 1 in the Kimberley was found to have be
Ancient Bone Tools in WA Dated to Be Over 35,000 Years Old
Four bone tools discovered in Western Australia have changed how archaeologists think of ancient northern Australian indigenous societies after the tools were reevaluated to be between 35,000 and 47,000 years old making them among the oldest of their kind in Australia.
The findings published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology in February come after a similar discovery in 2016 of a roughly 46,000-year-old nose piercing made from kangaroo bone. Prior to this, bone tools were believed by some to only have existed as early as 20,000 years ago.
Dr Michelle Langley, from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and Forensics & Archaeology, said it was once believed that bone tools did not play an important role in the ancient indigenous society’s in northern Australia.