Anthony Dosseto

Fossil rock wallaby teeth from Mount Etna Caves and a portrait of a modern yellow-footed rock wallaby. Chris Laurikainen Gaete

January 11, 2026

Modern rock wallabies seem to survive by sticking together in small areas. Fossils show they need to travel

Christopher Laurikainen Gaete, University of Wollongong; Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong, and Scott Hocknull, CQUniversity Australia

Today, rock wallabies rarely stray far from the safety of their rocky shelters. But the fossil record tells a very different story.

Chris Laurikainen Gaete

April 23, 2025

Fossil teeth show extinct giant kangaroos spent their lives close to home – and perished when the climate changed

Christopher Laurikainen Gaete, University of Wollongong; Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong; Lee Arnold, University of Wollongong, and Scott Hocknull, The University of Melbourne

Australia’s giant Protemnodon kangaroos didn’t die out everywhere at the same time. Instead, extinction proceeded one habitat at a time.

Ulladulla Local Aboriginal Land Council and Mane Collective

March 8, 2024

Cultural burning is better for Australian soils than prescribed burning, or no burning at all

Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong; Katharine Haynes, University of Wollongong; Leanne Brook, Indigenous Knowledge, and Victor Channell, Indigenous Knowledge

What does fire management do to soils? We compared prescribed burning to cultural burning and looked at how soil properties changed after fire. Cultural burning was better.

Lake Couridjah, Thirlmere Lakes National Park in New South Wales. Shutterstock

September 21, 2022

We helped fill a major climate change knowledge gap, thanks to 130,000‑year‑old sediment in Sydney lakes

Alexander Francke, University of Adelaide; Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong; Haidee Cadd, University of Wollongong, and Tim Cohen, University of Wollongong

80% of carbon on land in stored in soil. Our new research investigated how erosion transports this carbon to the bottom of lakes, where it’ll never be released into the atmosphere.

Life and death in tropical Australia, 40,000 years ago. Giant reptiles ruled northern Australia during the Pleistocene with mega-marsupials as their prey. Image Credit: R. Bargiel, V. Konstantinov, A. Atuchin & S. Hocknull (2020). Queensland Museum.

May 18, 2020

Humans coexisted with three‑tonne marsupials and lizards as long as cars in ancient Australia

Scott Hocknull, The University of Melbourne; Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong; Gilbert Price, The University of Queensland; Lee Arnold, University of Adelaide; Patrick Moss, The University of Queensland, and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Southern Cross University

These megafauna were the largest land animals to live in Australia since the time of the dinosaurs.

Lake sediment tells an ancient story of trees, soil – and disaster. Dr. Niklas Leicher, University of Cologne

May 30, 2019

Trees, the ancient Macedonians, and the world’s first environmental disaster

Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong and Alexander Francke, University of Wollongong

Thousands of years of history tells the same story over and over: you ignore soil at your peril.

The source of the Yamuna River, one of the major rivers draining the Himalayas. Anthony Dosseto

February 10, 2019

Melting Himalayan glaciers: a big drop in a bucket that’s already full

Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong

A new report predicts that one-third of the ice in the Himalayas will melt, even if we contain global warming to 1.5C. So what does that mean for the flood-prone valleys below?

From the largest whales to the smallest plankton and microscopic life, we’re all tightly connected to planet Earth. Vivek Kumar/unsplash

December 19, 2018

Unpacking the history of how Earth feeds life, and life changes Earth

Anthony Dosseto, University of Wollongong; Alexander Young, University of Wollongong, and Nicolas Flament, University of Wollongong

Although often separated as two unique subjects in science, geology and biology have been intricately intertwined since life on Earth first evolved billions of years ago.

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