Case file · Cryptid
Geelong 'wonderful discovery'
On 2 July 1845 the Geelong Advertiser reported a fossil bone that an Aboriginal man identified as a bunyip, the first printed use of the word 'bunyip'. The Sydney Morning Herald repeated it ten days later.
1845 CE · -38.15, 144.36 · status: legend
The account
A man named Mumbowran showed scars he said were bunyip claw wounds. The story set off a decade of colonial bunyip fever.
The sceptical view
The bones were probably those of extinct Pleistocene megafauna such as Diprotodon, which some scholars think inspired Aboriginal bunyip traditions in the first place.