Cuddie Springs

[Esmee Webb]

Another contribution to the latest storm in a teacup.
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I understand that 1001 emails have been flying around the ether in response to Field & 
Fullagar's posting on AQUAlist, but I havent seen them, so I may be duplicating points 
already made.  If someone could POP the correspondance through to me, I'd be grateful.

In the reports on Cuddie Springs that I have read (Dodson et al. 1993; Furby et al. 1993; Field 
& Boles 1998; Field & Dodson 1999), it is made abundantly clear that the bones in unit 6 are 
disarticulated and scattered.  Many are broken and/or abraded.  Most are horizontally bedded, 
but some are angled sharply to the vertical.  Some are highly mineralised, some hardly 
mineralised at all.  In at least one paper it is clearly stated that the bone in unit 6 is reworked, 
by trampling and/or slumping.

Therefore, Roberts et al. have rightly concluded that the faunal material in unit 6 is disturbed, 
although it may not have been moved very far from its place of primary deposition.  There is, 
therefore, every reason to suppose that the sediment surrounding the bones could be younger 
than the bones themselves.

To claim as Field & Fullagar now have that AL1 is not disturbed contradicts their previous 
description and analysis of the material in these deposits.  The reasons they advance in their 
AQUAlist posting for their change of mind do not address, and most definitely no NOT 
refute, their previously published statements which make clear that the bone in unit 6 IS 
disturbed.  That is not to say that Cuddie Springs is not an important site, but its data are 
irrelevant to the megafaunal extinction debate.

Esm?e Webb
Biomedical Sciences
Edith Cowan University
Joondalup WA 6027
e.webb at cowa.edu.au