Word: diprotodons
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...team is patient with neophytes fascinated by Riversleigh's extinct megafauna (though many of these creatures were known already from deposits elsewhere in Australia), among them the rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon optatum, distantly related to the wombat; and the 3-m tall, 400-kg flightless bird Dromornis stirtoni, which had a beak large and sharp enough to tear the flesh off a kangaroo, if not as a predator then as a scavenger. Extracting the fossils of such creatures is harder than finding them. These palaeontologists aren't eggheads: they spend seven hours each day under a scorching sun levering boulders...
...sheets. And although scientists generally agree that the major climatic changes of the past 50,000 years occurred at approximately the same time throughout the world, the disappearance of species did not. Thus the antlered giraffe disappeared from Africa more than 40,000 years ago, and the rhino-sized Diprotodon and giant kangaroo became extinct in Australia about 14,000 years ago. In Europe and Asia, the woolly rhinoceros and the woolly mammoth ceased to exist between 11,000 and 13,000 years ago, before the species disappeared in North America. Yet on Madagascar, the extinction of giant lemurs...
Before the Diprotodon...
...that I wish to belittle Dr. Ruben A. Stirton's zealous search for facts about the prehistoric diprotodon [TIME, July 20], but it seems to me that James Thurber discovered it first...
...Name: diprotodon. Age: uncertain. Domicile: Australia. Physical characteristics: looks like a rhinoceros but has a pouch like a kangaroo. These are the vital specifications of one of the strangest prehistoric beasts known. Henceforth, thanks to Ruben A. Stirton, professor of paleontology at the University of California, scientists will learn a lot more about the diprotodon than the few fragmentary facts which, in the past, enabled them to put together only a vague sort of passport picture...
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