Australians Find Huge Mega-Wombat Graveyard

Gulf Times ^ | 6/22/2012

[nickcarraway]

Australian scientists yesterday unveiled the biggest-ever graveyard of an ancient rhino-sized mega-wombat called diprotodon, with the site potentially holding valuable clues on the species’ extinction.

The remote fossil deposit in outback Queensland state is thought to contain up to 50 diprotodon skeletons including a huge specimen named Kenny, whose jawbone alone is 70cm long.

Lead scientist on the dig, Scott Hocknull from the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, said Kenny was one of the largest diprotodons he had ever seen and one of the best preserved specimens.

Pigeon-toed and with a backward-facing pouch large enough to carry an adult human, Hocknull likened diprotodon to “a cross between a wombat and a bear but the size of a rhinoceros”. The deposit contained the largest concentration of mega-wombat fossils ever discovered and could hold important clues on how the diprotodon lived and what caused it to perish, he said.

“When we did the initial survey I was just completely blown away by the concentrations of these fragments,” he told AFP by telephone from the far-flung desert dig site, which he estimated at between 100,000-200,000 years old. “It’s a palaeontologists’ goldmine where we can really see what these megafauna were doing, how they actually behaved, what their ecology was.

“With so many fossils it gives us a unique opportunity to see these animals in their environment, basically, so we can reconstruct it.”

The mega-wombats appeared to have been trapped in boggy conditions at the site after seeking refuge there from extremely dry conditions during a period of significant climate change in ancient Australia, he added.

Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever to roam the earth, weighing up to 2.8 tonnes, lived between 2mn and 50,000 years ago and died out around the time indigenous tribes first appeared.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks martin_fierro and Tainan, and thanks nickc for the topic. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

Death assemblage, not "huddled together in a bog". Thanks martin_fierro and Tainan, and thanks nickc for the topic.

---

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

---

[Mr. K]

I like wombats and badgers

[Scoutmaster]

The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods,
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.

-- Ogden Nash

[Wizdum]

Alternate headline:

Future Oil Reserve Disturbed.

[gopheraj]

The mega-wombats appeared to have been trapped in boggy conditions at the site after seeking refuge there from extremely dry conditions during a period of significant climate change in ancient Australia, he added

Climate change in ancient times? How... how quaint ;) LOL

[nickcarraway]

Wombat oil is the best.

Put a wombat in your tank!

[Grimmy]

They’d have made good pack and transport animals, eh?

[BroJoeK]

Article: "Pigeon-toed and with a backward-facing pouch large enough to carry an adult human."

JRandomFreeper: "That's just so wrong, on so many levels."

Article: "Hocknull likened diprotodon to 'a cross between a wombat and a bear but the size of a rhinoceros'. "

Ken H: "Could be an ancestor of the Flying Purple People Eater."

"Pigeon-toed under-growed flyin' purple people eater..."