Scientists excited after rare fossil find

14 Sep 2012, 1:50 pm   -   Source: AAP
A cattle station worker has unearthed a fossilised skeleton of a huge wombat-like creature. (AAP)

A cattle station worker has unearthed a fossilised skeleton of a huge wombat-like creature. (AAP)

A cattle station worker has unearthed a fossilised skeleton of a huge wombat-like creature, the first diprotodon found in the Northern Territory.

Scientists are excited after a worker on a cattle station found the Northern Territory's first fossilised skeleton of a huge wombat-like creature that lived thousands of years ago.

The diprotodon skeleton, thought to include the ribs, hips, spinal column and back legs - but missing the skull - was handed in to authorities by a cattle station land manager last month.

The rhinoceros-sized diprotodon was the largest marsupial ever to have lived, and the species discovered near a road about 10 hours from Darwin is of the largest type, diprotodon optatum.

It is hotly debated as to whether human beings drove megafauna such as diprotodons and giant kangaroos to extinction oo if they disappeared for other reasons.

Curator of Earth Sciences at the Museum of Central Australia, Dr Adam Yates, said it was hoped the new find would help answer questions that had been puzzling experts.

"We are all sort of crossing our fingers and hoping that this may be the site that definitely shows human-megafaunal interaction, but I can't say that yet," Dr Yates said.

"It is all very exciting because a Diprotodon has not been found in the Northern Territory before.

"Any ice-age site from the tropical north of Australia is a rarity, there are very, very few such sites," he said.

The femur handed in to authorities is covered in limestone.

"There might be such things as cut marks or teeth marks underneath but we don't know that yet," he said.

He said the megafauna could have been wiped out because of many different factors.

"I believe the coincidental arrival of humans at about that time or just before that time is significant," Dr Yates said.

Diprotodons were herbivorous marsupials thought to be a distant ancestor of wombats, but unlike wombats did not live in burrows dug underground.

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