‘Giant wombat’ fossil discovery in Australia leaves vital clues of life 40,000 years ago
- Two council workers found a rarely intact piece of jawbone of a baby diprotodon, which roamed the earth around the same time as mammoths in the northern hemisphere
A “giant wombat” fossil has been discovered by local council workers in the Monaro region of southern New South Wales.
Two Snowy Monaro regional council employees found the fossilised jaw of a baby diprotodon last Friday at an undisclosed location that is known for such paleontological findings.
The council workers informed the Australian Museum of their discovery and its curator, Matthew McCurry, extracted the fossil at the weekend.
“A couple of locals called me up and asked me if I’d like to come and collect it safely for the museum,” McCurry told Guardian Australia. “If people were to try and collect these without any experience, it’s quite likely that they’d be broken and we’d lose information.”
They likely fed on shrubs and herbaceous, non-grasslike plants known as forbs and may have eaten as much as 100 to 150kg of vegetation daily, using its chisel-like incisors to do so. It is the largest known marsupial to ever have lived.