Page 183 - The Dinosaur Book and Other Wonders of the Prehistoric World (DK-Smithsonian)

LARGEST MARSUPIAL

The giant wombat Diprotodon was the largest
marsupial that ever lived. Up to 10 ft (3 m) About 10 ft (3 m) tall, the biggest
long, it stood almost 7 ft (2.1 m) tall. It had species of Procoptodon was the
enormous front teeth that it used to rip the largest-known kangaroo; it lived
leaves off bushes and trees, and big cheek until about 50,000 years ago.
teeth for mashing the leaves to a pulp.

Procoptodon Mega-marsupials

Diprotodon

This enormous
marsupial was a
relative of the modern
wombat and koala, and
like them, it ate plants.

Stripes may have acted Like modern kangaroos,
as camouflage in wooded the mother carried her
habitats, concealing the baby in a pouch until it
animal from its prey. could feed itself.
The skull and jaws of
Thylacinus were very
similar to those of a wolf.

The heavily built
Borhyaena lived
about 16 million years
ago in Argentina.
Borhyaena

The last
known Thylacinus
died in a zoo in
Hobart, Tasmania,
in 1936.

evolved to take their place. They included wombat Diprotodon. Most of these ice-age
ancestral koalas; the plant-eating, tapirlike marsupials had become extinct by about 30,000
Palorchestes; and the predatory marsupial lion years ago, probably because climate change had
Thylacoleo. During the ice ages, some of these created a drier climate, but Thylacinus, also
animals grew to huge sizes, like the giant kangaroo known as the Tasmanian wolf, survived into
Procoptodon and the hippopotamus-sized the early 20th century. 181

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