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A " unique " fossil site in Western Australia is break the elusive remains of the creation ’s large ever marsupial , a museum has announced .
The underframe belong toDiprotodon , which is have-to doe with to wombats and native bear and lived during the Pleistocene epoch ( about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago ) . These megafauna were giants , and produce up to 5.6 human foot ( 1.7 metre ) magniloquent at the articulatio humeri , 12.5 foot ( 3.8 m ) long and could weigh 3.1 heaps ( 2.8 metric rafts ) .
A painting of the now-extinct marsupialDiprotodon.
researcher have found at least 10Diprotodonskeletons at the situation but have yet to turn up them fully . Adults and juveniles may be among the fogey , which could mean the website was on a major migration itinerary forDiprotodon , the team pronounce in a command eject by theWestern Australian Museumon Oct. 19 .
There are parts of the ancient marsupials ' skull , bones and tooth lying all over the ground , Gilbert Price , a paleontologist at the University of Queensland who is part of the mining , tell during a telecasting audience at the situation .
" I ’ve never seen a fossil site quite like this , " cost sound out . " It ’s not normal to be able to walk across the landscape and just look on the ground and say , ' That ’s a vertebra , there ’s another part of a leg bone , there ’s a skull over there … ' This is the sort of stuff that you might see in a movie like Jurassic Park . "
Paleontologists excavateDiprotodonfossils in Western Australia.
have-to doe with : Quarter - ton marsupial that ambled across Australia 3.5 million years ago was ' unlike anything alive today '
Diprotodonemerged around 2 million years ago and went extinct about 25,000 years ago . Climate alteration and human activity may have been factor in their extinction , but they co - survive with primaeval people for more than 20,000 class , grant to theAustralian Museumin Sydney .
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investigator have foundDiprotodonfossils all across Australia . They were first unearthed at the land site of the new excavation , located in Du Boulay Creek , in 1991 . The fresh discoveries establish the creek as a site of major scientific import , according to another statement .
The researchers also found evidence of ancient mangroves and Cancer fogy among the megafauna . Price said the fossil deposit combines land brute likeDiprotodonwith " estuarine or almost maritime type of conditions . "
" It ’s something that ’s utterly unique in the fossil disk , not only to this part of Western Australia , but the integral continent itself , " he tote up .
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