It did not eat flesh, but whatever got in its way would have been trampled to death, scientists agreed today after the first complete skeleton of a prehistoric monster was found in Australia.
Known as a diprotodon and likened to a giant wombat, weighing three tons and stretching up to 14ft long, it roamed the Australian continent between 25,000 and two million years ago.
What is known, from a fragment of bone from the remains of another diprotodon discovered in New South Wales, is that these creatures lived on the continent at the same time as the early Aborigines.
Reconstruction: The first complete skeleton of a prehistoric monster has been found by scientists in north-west Queensland, Australia
A small hole was found in that fragment, suggesting that the animal was brought down by a spear.
But that was just one bone and, until the latest discovery in north-west Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria region, a complete skeleton had not been found.
'We hope we will now be able to reconstruct the bones, put them into their original positions, to give us a pretty good idea of what these creatures looked like,' said Professor Michael Archer of the Australian Museum, who has travelled to a cattle station where the skeleton was found.
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