Australia: Oldest rock art is 17,300-year-old kangaroo bbc.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bbc.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A large, life-like painting of a kangaroo on the ceiling of a rock shelter is the oldest known painting in Australia, and was dated using ancient wasp nests
Wasps reveal age of Australiaâs oldest-known rock paintings
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In a network of rock shelters along the Kimberley, right at the tip of Western Australia, there are paintings thousands of years old. A gallery of echidnas, goannas, fish, yams, hand prints, silhouettes, stencilled boomerangs and lots of kangaroos.
They share a style: life-sized and realistic recreations of the things the artist saw in their day-to-day lives on the land of the Balanggarra traditional owners.
Traditional owner Ian Waina inspects a painting of a kangaroo that is more than 12,700 years old.
Scientists have identified a life-size portrait of a kangaroo as Australia s oldest rock painting. The ancient art, described Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior, is between 17,500 and 17,100 years old.