Flinders University researchers reveal the extinct megafauna were adept climbers, tore meat cleanly off bones and reared their young in caves

When humans first set foot in Australia about 50,000 years ago, they could have faced ferocious marsupial lions that ambushed prey from trees and grew to the size of African lions. A new study reveals the now-extinct megafauna were adept climbers, could tear meat cleanly off bones, and reared their young in caves.

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The precise behaviour of Thylacoleo carnifex, or marsupial lion, has been a matter of much controversy. Over time, theories have suggested it was everything from a consumer of crocodile eggs to a hyena-like scavenger and a leopard-like predator that dragged its prey into trees.

Now a cave on the south-western tip of Australia known as Tight Entrance cave, which is brimming with bones of the marsupial lions and their prey and has scratch marks covering the walls, has helped paint a detailed picture of its ferocious capabilities.

Gavin Prideaux and Samuel Arman, from Flinders University in Adelaide, examined hundreds of scratch marks on the cave’s walls and identified a large set of marks that were clearly from the marsupial lion, which became extinct about 40,000 years ago.

“The fact that they might have been bowling down crevices to get into caves is a nice idea,” said Mike Archer, a paleontologist from the University of New South Wales.

They found many of the claw marks were gouged into steep surfaces, even though there were paths through the cave with more gradual inclines. “This suggests regular, confident and purposeful climbing with a high degree of agility,” the researchers wrote in the journal Scientific Reports.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A drawing of a giant marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex. Photograph: Martin Thompson/AFP

The finding reinforces the hypothesis, based on earlier analyses of bones, that they would have climbed and hunted from trees.

“We assumed that they were at least partly arboreal,” Archer said. “The hind foot has an opposable first toe, the front arm is grasping and the fore limbs are extremely powerful, which is typical of animals that climb, having to pull their body weight up. And their claws are quite capable of maintaining them in trees.

“These were hunters that didn’t necessarily run down prey, but surprised and lunged at them – yes, dropped from trees.”

And the study further suggested they were expert at tearing flesh from bones. As with other fossils thought be the remains of prey consumed by marsupial lions, no bones in the cave had any visible teeth marks. The researchers said the same thing was found with the remains of prey from flesh specialists such as lions, who usually tore meat clean off bones without leaving marks that could be seen on fossils.

Archers said it was possible the lions not only hunted from trees, but also dragged their prey into trees to consume them.

Examining the distance between the marks on the walls of the cave, the researchers estimated the age of the animal that made them. They found the caves were inhabited by many more juvenile lions than adults.

“One possibility is that, at any one time, the chamber was occupied by a lone mother looking after a single litter,” they wrote.

Another possibility was that multiple mothers reared their young in the cave at a single time. But as the animals grew, it appeared they spent less time in the cave.

“That’s probably the best evidence we could get that they actually habitually used caves as shelters,” Archers says.