Australia's megafauna
A three-tonne marsupial, a two-metre kangaroo and a seven-metre lizard dominate an isolated continent.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.2 million years
- Known to
- ± 200 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever, reaches three tonnes and browses saltbush across the interior. Procoptodon is a short-faced kangaroo too heavy to hop efficiently, which probably walked. Megalania is a monitor lizard perhaps seven metres long, and Genyornis a flightless bird twice the mass of an emu. Thylacoleo, the marsupial lion, has the strongest bite for its size of any known mammal and a huge thumb claw. All of them persist until humans arrive.