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Rocks, Varnish, Water and an Impact Crater!

Updated: 4 hours ago

France Champenois, John Fairweather, Ying-Li Wu


Dating Murujuga’s Dreaming’s first fieldwork for 2025 was a two-part extravaganza that took place in early April. Fieldwork started at Murujuga, where the Dating Team, supported by partners Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation and Rio Tinto, were joined by international rock varnish expert Dr Tanzhuo Liu. Before fieldwork started at Murujuga, new team members were given a cultural induction by MAC Ranger Caleb Pitt-Cook, facilitated by Senior Ranger Peter Cooper.


Figure 1. Left - John Fairweather and Tanzhuo Liu studying rock art varnish on the Burrup; Right - some of the team taking in the sights of Newman, clockwise from top right: John Fairweather, David Fink, Tanzhuo Liu, Ying-Li Wu, Jo McDonald, Ashley Rogers, Aaron Cavosie, Luke Gliganic and Martin Danišík.


We collected our annual water samples and hydrology/climate data from Enderby Island and took Dr Liu to see sites with desert vanish on the Burrup and Rosemary Island.  In Dr Liu’s opinion this appears to be amongst the oldest varnish he has seen anywhere in the world.


On Rosemary Island the team visited a major site complex to inspect the many engravings which have desert varnish in their grooves.  Dr Li was delighted by the number of petroglyphs with desert varnish inside engraved lines/pits. Murujuga’s ancient geology presents amazing opportunities to date the oldest desert varnish in the world!



Figure 2. The desert varnish team at work on Rosemary Island


The water team on Enderby Island started in the mangroves where they encountered friendly stingrays, crossed the samphire plain, and climbed into the upland valley. Freshwater tufa carbonates along an interior pool sequence are providing a climatic reconstruction over the last 10,000 years. The team carefully collected samples from the upstream pools at END10, a target site of the project.



Figure 3. Left - sampling the END10 downstream pools; Centre - green biofilms and algae floating at the water's surface; Right - France Champenois collecting water samples at the END10 upstream pools.


Our next stage of fieldwork, at Hickman Crater (near Newman), involved archaeologists, geochronologists, geologists, geomorphologists, and space and meteorite scientists: a truly multidisciplinary team!  The goal of this fieldwork was to try to date more accurately the meteor impact, to provide a starting chronology for desert varnish formation. Hickman Crater is on Karlka Niaparli country, on a Hanroy Prospecting tenement, and all necessary permissions and approvals were sought for this fieldwork.


Once we reached the crater the team sprang into action and collected various rock, varnish and soil samples. The formation age of Hickman Crater is currently thought to be somewhere between 10,000 - 100,000 years ago. While this may be precise in geological terms – it is not a sufficiently narrow window for understanding the human time-scale of the Pilbara!


Figure 4. Team Hickman Crater at the 'post box' on the rim. From left to right: John Fairweather, David Fink, Ying-Li Wu, Aaron Cavosie, Martin Danišík, Tanzhuo Liu, Jo McDonald (Luke Gliganic and Ashley Rogers out of shot).
Figure 4. Team Hickman Crater at the 'post box' on the rim. From left to right: John Fairweather, David Fink, Ying-Li Wu, Aaron Cavosie, Martin Danišík, Tanzhuo Liu, Jo McDonald (Luke Gliganic and Ashley Rogers out of shot).

Our Dating Murujuga’s Dreaming fieldwork has included new exciting research collaborations.  Hickman Crater could reveal a late Pleistocene climate records that extends our Holocene record based on the Murujuga Tufas. By discovering a more precise age for Hickman Crater, we hope to calibrate rock varnish formation, a vital step for dating the Murujuga petroglyphs!

 
 
 

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