The Giant Wombat

Diprotodon

The largest marsupial known to science is the now extinct diprotodon. Also known as the giant wombat or the rhinoceros wombat, this mighty marsupial grazer stood  nearly 2 meters (6 feet) tall and stretched 3 metres (9.8 feet) from nose to tail.  The animals flourished throughout much of the Pleistocene. From 1.6 million years ago until about 40,000 years ago, herds of Diprotodonts roamed across all of Australia.  These giant wombats were indeed closely related to today’s wombats and koalas: jointly such creatures make up the Vombatiforme suborder   Considering how formidable the bulldozer-like living wombat is, diprotodons must have indeed been like rhinoceroses and they probably occupied a similar top spot in the Australian web of life.

Unfortunately, like a substantial portion of Australia’s mega-fauna, the giant wombats disappeared shortly after humankind reached the island continent. The creatures apparently were destroyed by some combination of climate change, human hunting, and slash-and-burn land management. Aboriginal dreamtime lore makes extensive mention of a mighty furred beast called the bunyip–which has led anthropologists and paleontologists to speculate that the diprotodon has lived on in oral tradition for tens of thousands of years.

Fossil Remains of Diprotodon australis

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