Ingo Helbig; 29/12/09
As you drive from Perth down to your favourite Margaret River winery, you’ll pass close to the place where palaeontologist Gavin Prideaux and his team from Adelaide’s Flinders University are brushing and scraping their way towards scientific discovery. You won’t notice them, though. They’re deep below the surface in a network of secret caves known to only a handful of people. Small openings lead into vast limestone caverns filled with dazzling stalagmites and stalactites. But it’s not these stunning formations the scientists have come to see. They’re here to look at very old bones, the bones of Australia’s large beasts that disappeared thousands of years ago.These creatures were big. Wombats as big your fridge lying on its side, kangaroos standing more than 2m tall, a goanna called Megalania that could eat you for lunch, and a very nasty piece of work called Thylacoleo carnifex or the marsupial lion.
Tags: Australia, Palaeontology