SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. A team
of Australian palaeontologists say they have found the fossilized
remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon
duck of doom".
A University of New South Wales team said the fearsome fossils were
among 20 previously unknown species uncovered at a site in northwest
Queensland state.
Professor Michael Archer said on Wednesday the remains of a meat-eating
kangaroo with wolf-like fangs were found as well as a galloping
kangaroo with long forearms that could not hop like a modern kangaroo.
"Because they didn't hop, these were galloping kangaroos, with big,
powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines (fangs) like wolves,"
Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
Vertebrate paleontologist Sue Hand said modern kangaroos look almost
nothing like their ferocious forebears, which lived between 10 million
and 20 million years ago.
The species found at the dig had "well muscled-in teeth, not for
grazing. These things had slicing crests that could have crunched
through bone and sliced off flesh", Hand said.
The team also found prehistoric lungfish and large duck-like birds.
"Very big birds ... more like ducks, earned the name 'demon duck of
doom', some at least may have been carnivorous as well," Hand told ABC
radio.
Archer said the team was studying the fossils to better understand how
they were affected by changing climates in the Miocene epoch between 5
million and 24 million years ago.
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