Australian scientists find biggest-ever diprotodon graveyard

PanARMENIAN.Net - Australian scientists Thursday, June 21, 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.

According to AFP, 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 70 centimeters (28 inches) 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. "With so many fossils it gives us a unique opportunity to see these animals in their environment, basically, so we can reconstruct it."

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

Human and climate triggers for its disappearance are hotly debated.