Hunting the Pleistocene with Desert Dog

[Laniarius]

If you like speculative fiction along with a good background for the question, "what's a good three rifle battery for Pleistocene park?", you'll like this video.

 

[Certus]

Aww I thought you went out fossil hunting. I collect Pleistocene megafauna in Australia. Donated hundreds of specimens to the QLD Museum. Here’s a croc jaw from us that made it on display.

For Aus Pleistocene a .375 would be overkill for almost everything. We had 20’ lizards but the rest weren’t that big, small SUV for the largest. Biggest kangaroos were only 7-8’ tall. Diprotodon incisors (upper and lower) could make a cool trophy display.

 

[Laniarius]

Aww I thought you went out fossil hunting. I collect Pleistocene megafauna in Australia. Donated hundreds of specimens to the QLD Museum. Here’s a croc jaw from us that made it on display.

For Aus Pleistocene a .375 would be overkill for almost everything. We had 20’ lizards but the rest weren’t that big, small SUV for the largest. Biggest kangaroos were only 7-8’ tall. Diprotodon incisors (upper and lower) could make a cool trophy display.

View attachment 644533

Very nice! I've only managed to fossil hunt trilobites myself.

I live among Pleistocene glacial deposits in Southern Ontario but I've never come across bones. I found a piece of ~40k old wood in some lakeshore bluff sediments while doing some geology fieldwork 25 years ago.

 

[CBH Australia]

Aww I thought you went out fossil hunting. I collect Pleistocene megafauna in Australia. Donated hundreds of specimens to the QLD Museum. Here’s a croc jaw from us that made it on display.

For Aus Pleistocene a .375 would be overkill for almost everything. We had 20’ lizards but the rest weren’t that big, small SUV for the largest. Biggest kangaroos were only 7-8’ tall. Diprotodon incisors (upper and lower) could make a cool trophy display.

View attachment 644533

Nice, it’s good to see they are preserved, studied or displayed.
Are there any rules around collecting the bones or remains of theses extinct species?

 

[Certus]

Nice, it’s good to see they are preserved, studied or displayed.
Are there any rules around collecting the bones or remains of theses extinct species?

In qld - have permission from property owner. Need a fossickers licence for invertebrate stuff but there’s no one policing it or caring to. Vertebrate material has no restrictions (oddly enough).

Yeah 2 of our items made it to display in Southbank. The other 500 or so didn’t but are in storage. There’s already a project on some of our donation (semi destructive) that involves cutting/drilling into teeth to get a sample for dating. Results should be back this month.

 

[Certus]

As for OP. Wooly mammoths were about the same size as an African elephant. Though that mop of hair may make bullet placement a bit trickier to see? Colombian Mammoths were bigger still. I guess the old .375 H&H is just queen of any time period.

 

[grand veneur]

I don't shot this game, we found the bone in a gravel pit in my region where mammoth teeth have sometime also been found. It is a shoulder blade, but it is difficult to say which animal it comes from. It was in all cases a big animal, giant deer, buffalo or even a woolly rhino, difficult to say.

 

[grand veneur]

As far as the choice of cartridges is concerned, the majority of these game species were at the upper limit and above in terms of size and weight compared to what we hunt nowadays. Would come to that at the time the hunting areas were certainly extremely difficult to walk on, so that tracking wounded game would not always be possible. Depending on the terrain and game, you would have also to be prepared to shoot at longer distances and for this reason to choose the cartridges accordingly. Big bore cartridges with a good stopping effect would be recommended in all cases and no the 375 H&H Magnum where a stone age PH would in all cases have to be present for backup.

 

[Laniarius]

I don't shot this game, we found the bone in a gravel pit in my region where mammoth teeth have sometime also been found. It is a shoulder blade, but it is difficult to say which animal it comes from. It was in all cases a big animal, giant deer, buffalo or even a woolly rhino, difficult to say.

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I agree, difficult to tell, but I suspect a mammal specialist paleontologist could narrow it down pretty well. I'm always amazed in casual reading on the topic how they can identify animals from such fragments, but they often can.