Wombat 'the size of a four-wheel drive' found in Australia

Palaeontologists in Queensland said they had unearthed a virtually complete skeleton of a diprotodon, a giant wombat-like creature known for its massive tusks and tiny brain.

The diprotodon, about the size of a rhinoceros, was found on a remote cattle station in an area rich in the remains of prehistoric megafauna. The discovery of a virtually complete fossil makes it one of Australia’s most significant prehistoric discoveries.

"It was the biggest of them all – the biggest marsupial that ever lived on any continent," one of the researchers, Professor Sue Hand, a palaeontologist at the University of New South Wales, told Australian Geographic.

"It was a bit like a wombat but looked more like a massive, rhino-type beast ... We've found the skull and jaws, as well most of the rest of the skeleton. It's a really good specimen."

The plant-eating diprotodon roamed the country around 2.5 million years ago and became extinct about 55,000 years ago. Scientists believe the species died out because of the arrival of the first indigenous people or climate change, or a combination of the two.

The area, on the Leichhardt River between Normanton and Burketown, has been a trove of giant creature fossils. Palaeontologists have been searching there for more than 40 years and have found evidence of Australian megafauna such as giant kangaroos and giant lizards.

Researchers spotted an arm bone jutting out of the ground last year. Further digging revealed it was connected to a shoulder blade and that much of the skeleton was intact.

The bones were found alongside the tooth from a giant goanna - a type of lizard - that appears to have become dislodged while feasting on the carcase of the diprotodon.

“At the end of the carcase was a huge tooth of a goanna,” a professor of biological science at the University of New South Wales, Professor Mike Archer, told ABC Radio.

“In its savage tearing apart of the carcase it must have torn one of its teeth out.”


/Telegraph.co.uk/