Mungo-Nationalpark

The Mungo National Park (English Mungo National Park ) is a national park in the southwest of the Australian state of New South Wales.

It is located 743 km west of Sydney in the area around Balranald. He is part of the Willandra Lakes Region ( World Heritage Site), which covers an area of ​​2,400 km ² and contains 17 lakes dried up. The second largest lake dried up and the main component of the Mungo National Park is Lake Mungo.

The national park is of palaeontological interest, as several exceptional archaeological finds have been recovered in this area. Was first discovered the skeleton of Mungo Lady, the one originally estimated to 26,000 years. As one the skeleton of the so-called Mungo Man found his age has been scientifically studied and set to about 40,000, and then the age of Mungo woman had to be corrected to about 40,000 years. The Mungo Lady and Mungo Man are both buried ritually and are the oldest known human remains in Australia. Both remarkable finds are evidence of the millenary history of human development and the Aborigines.

Furthermore, were found on the banks of the dried-up lakes in the clay soil around 20,000 year old footprints of early humans.

At Lake Mungo a bizarrely shaped dunes semicircle has formed at the broken edges of the lake, the Walls of China is called. The vegetation of the Mungo National Park consists of salt bushes on the slightly salty soil of the Lake Mungo and the typical New South Wales plants. The fauna consists of kangaroos, lizards, pine cones lizards, bearded dragons, Taipanen and echidnas as well as parakeets, finches, doves and eagles.