Page 182 - The Dinosaur Book and Other Wonders of the Prehistoric World (DK-Smithsonian)
P. 182
Mega-marsupials
Palorchestes
This horse-sized
herbivore used
its mobile snout
to gather leaves
from bushes
Thylacoleo
and low trees.
Thylacosmilus
The size of a lioness, and with
an extremely powerful bite,
Thylacoleo was the biggest
ice-age Australian predator.
The huge saber teeth
of this South American
hunter were protected by
bony plates extending
from the lower jaw.
This relative of the
modern Tasmanian
devil was a ferocious
predator and scavenger,
with very powerful jaws.
Thylacinus
Sarcophilus
Many early mammals were 100 million years ago. Some, like the fearsome
marsupials—mammals whose saber-toothed Thylacosmilus and the hyenalike
half-formed young live in the mother’s Borhyaena, continued to live in South America
pouch until fully developed. Marsupials were alongside placental mammals (mammals that give
thriving in South America and Australia, which birth to well-developed young). But there were no
had once been part of the same continent, about placental mammals in Australia, so marsupials
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