In distant ages, Australia was home to
many marsupial giants which died out or evolved into the current forms which we
know today. The latest thinking is that the earliest of Aboriginal tribes
encountered these now extinct beasts and incorporated them into the legends of
their Dreaming. Giant kangaroos, wombats the size of Volkswagens, giant goannas
and snakes and marsupial lions are represented in this list. As in the case of
lake monsters and ‘ape men’ across the world, the survival of these forebears is
sometimes blamed for various recent cryptozoological appearances. An encounter
with one of these beasts is normally highly unlikely but, as those who wilfully
play around with the Plutonian Drug have discovered, “normal” is a relative
term...
Anthropornis nordenskjoeldi
Fossil evidence for this creature abounds
in the southern coastal regions of Australia and New Zealand. Essentially it is
a massive penguin, roughly six feet in height and with an ‘elbow’ joint on its
wings revealing a link to a flight-enabled distant ancestor. These birds were
abundant in Antarctica 40 million years ago, but so far the fossil record
cannot reveal if they were either blind or albino.
Bluff
Downs Giant Python
Fossilized remains of this creature were
first found in the Bluff Downs area in north-eastern Queensland. This giant
serpent lived in the Pliocene Era and averaged about 10 metres in length,
making it the largest snake, by a metre, ever to have lived on the planet,
compared to the Anaconda or the Reticulated Python. Some feel that Aboriginal
legends concerning the Rainbow Serpent are holdover memories of a time when
humans interacted with these reptiles.
Another monstrous serpent – Wonambi naracoortensis – lived further
south in the area around Adelaide in South Australia. It dates from the
Pleistocene era and grew up to 6 metres in length. Its scientific name derives
from the local tribal word for the Rainbow Serpent.
Carnivorous
Kangaroo
Propleopus
oscillans was a species
of large kangaroo-rat which weighed up to 70 kilograms. Its dentition, as
revealed in the fossil record, shows that it was capable of eating meat, but
what is more likely is that it was a highly evolved scavenger, living mainly on
insects, fruits and leaves, supplemented by stripping the occasional abandoned
animal carcase. It died out about 20,000 years ago.
Diprotodonts
The Diprotodonts
were a family of monstrous wombat-like creatures which averaged the size of
large hippos. The largest of them reached 10 feet in length and 6 feet at the
shoulder, weighing in at 2,000+ pounds. They roamed the arid and desert areas
of Australia during the Pleistocene era. It is theorised that they may have
been hunted to extinction by Aboriginal tribes around 40,000 years ago.
Procoptodon
The Procoptodon
was a gigantic form of kangaroo, standing on average 10 feet tall and weighing
around 230 kilograms (510 lbs). It had a shorter face than modern kangaroos
with forward-facing eyes and two extra-long clawed fingers on each forepaw,
supposedly allowing it to hook branches and other vegetation for ease of
grazing. Unlike modern kangaroos, the Procoptodon
had a single hoof-like toe on each foot allowing it to power through vegetation
while jumping. It is thought that these creatures may have been alive as
recently as 18,000 years ago.
Stirton’s
Thunder Bird
This massive flightless bird is one of a
genus of creatures called Dromornithids
and appears to be a cul-de-sac in the
evolution of modern waterfowl. The Thunder Bird stood over 3 metres tall and
roamed in large flocks across the Australian continent. Some debate still
occurs over whether they were carnivorous with recent discussion seeming to
favour an omnivorous lifestyle - largely herbivorous but with some scavenging,
similar to hyenas today. For many years Stirton’s Thunder Bird was thought to
have been the largest flightless bird ever to have existed, but recent fossil
discoveries of birds three times its size in China have nullified this record.
Human impact on their environment is thought to be the reason behind their
extinction around 18,000 years ago.
Thylacoleo carnifex
The Marsupial Lion was a cat-like mammal
that was roughly the same size as a leopard. Examination of its skull has shown
that it had, pound for pound, the strongest bite of any feline-type creature
the world has ever known. It also had extremely strong forelimbs with
semi-opposable thumbs and retractable claws (very unusual in a marsupial
species). Its tail was similar to that of a kangaroo and allowed it to balance
upright in order to bring all of its clawed limbs to bear in a fight. It lived
during the Pleistocene era, hunting Diprotodonts and giant kangaroos, and is
thought to have become extinct some 36,000 years ago.
Varanus priscus (aka. Megalania)
Essentially this was a goanna that grew
from five to seven metres in length and which stood two metres tall at the
shoulder. It would have been an ambush hunter capable of sudden and prolonged
bursts of speed, with terrible claws and teeth used to despatch its victims;
there is some continuing debate as to whether it may also have been venomous.
The lizard became extinct roughly 40,000 years ago but may have had some
interaction with the early human inhabitants of Australia.
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