Jim Maurice Bowler (born 1930) is an Australian geologist known for discovering the
Lake Mungo remains
The Lake Mungo remains are three prominent sets of human remains that are possibly Aboriginal Australian: Lake Mungo 1 (also called Mungo Woman, LM1, and ANU-618), Lake Mungo 3 (also called Mungo Man, Lake Mungo III, and LM3), and Lake Mungo 2 ...
, which are considered the oldest human remains in Australia. He is a professorial fellow at the
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb n ...
, School of Earth Sciences.
Early life
Bowler’s father was a fisherman who came from Ireland to farm in
Leongatha
Leongatha is a town in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland Shire, Victoria, Australia, located south-east of Melbourne. At the , Leongatha had a population of 5,869.
Canadian dairy company Saputo which trades in Austr ...
, southern Victoria. He spent his adolescence and young adulthood working as a farmer and rancher, growing potatoes and herding cattle. For a time, he studied to become a Jesuit priest, but gave up and went back to farming.
He left farming in his mid-twenties and enrolled at the University of Melbourne where he studied geology and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1958, and later, a Masters in 1961. Bowler moved to Canberra in 1965 and became a research fellow at the Australian National University.
He received his PhD in 1970, for his thesis "Late quaternary environments: a study of lakes and associated sediments in south-eastern Australia."
Lake Mungo remains
Bowler made his discovery in western New South Wales in March 1969. At the time, Bowler was in the department of biogeography and geomorphology at the
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...
. The human remains he found, and their subsequent radiocarbon dating, contributed to the historical rewriting of the timeline for Aboriginal settlement.
[Foster, S. G., & Varghese, M. M. (2009). ]
The Making of The Australian National University: 1946-1996
'. ANU Press. pp. 241-242. They have been dated to approximately 40,000 years ago.
[Roberts, R., Russell, L. & Bird, M. (July 5, 2018).]
Fifty years ago, at Lake Mungo, the true scale of Aboriginal Australians' epic story was revealed
. ''The Conversation''. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
References
External links
University of Melbourne
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowler, Jim
1930 births
University of Melbourne people
Australian National University alumni
Geologists from Melbourne
Living people