

Museum reveals deadly meat-eating kangaroo

A new exhibition at the Australian Museum destroys the tranquil, leaf munching image of Australian fauna such as kangaroos, koalas and wombats.



Australia's Lost Kingdom, opening this week in Sydney, reveals that a number of modern Australian animals are descended from much larger, more aggressive, and far more carnivorous ancestors.



It's the largest collection ever put together of fossil remains and reconstructions of Australia's extinct fauna, stretching back to the Cretaceous, 110 million years ago.



Procoptodon, for example, is a 2.5 metre high creature which looks like a koala crossed with a kangaroo. Australian palaoentologists had several near complete skeletons to work from, preserved in caves during the late Pleistocene.



Also on display is a reconstruction of Ekaltadeta, (left) a carnivorous kangaroo the size of a dog. Fossil remains suggest it may have stabbed at its prey with elongated teeth in the lower jaw, and manipulated and held its victims with its front legs.



Another fossil in the exhibition has also created some interest in the jewellery world. This is a fossilised jawbone from an ancient relative of the platypus, Steropodon. The fossil is unusual, and very valuable, in that it is opalised, leaving the teeth a delicate, transluscent lilac colour.



The exhibition also features a reconstruction of Riversleigh, by far the richest vertebrate fossil site found in Australia to date. The Riversleigh deposits in north western Queensland have so far yielded hundreds of new extinct species, including fossil crocodiles, frogs, turtles, mammals and birds, with more material still to be excavated.



Some skeletons have been particularly well preserved at Riversleigh, for example, a sheep-sized marsupial with its young. Researchers believe Riversleigh had its own version of the La Brea Tar Pits. Scattered about the Riversligh area when these animals were still alive were freshwater ponds which were very high in dissolved lime. This may have formed a crust thick enough to walk on but not to sustain weight for long. It may be that many of the animals now so well preserved were tricked into walking across the surface of such ponds.



Australia's Lost Kingdom runs until April next year.

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