Diprotodon means "two protruding front teeth" in Ancient Greek and optatum is Latin for "desire" or "wish". Owen formally described Diprotodon in Volume 2 without mentioning a species in Volume 1, however, he listed the name Diprotodon optatum, making that the type species. Mitchell published the correspondence in his journal. In 1838, while studying a piece of a right mandible with an incisor, Owen compared the tooth to those of wombats and hippos he wrote to Mitchell designating it as a new genus Diprotodon. They fossils were not formally described until Mitchell took them in 1837 to his former colleague English naturalist Richard Owen while in England publishing his journal. Īt the time these massive fossils were discovered, it was generally thought they were remains of rhinos, elephants, hippos. Remains of Diprotodon were excavated when Ranken later returned as part of a formal expedition that was headed by explorer Major Thomas Mitchell. This was the first major site of extinct Australian megafauna. In 1830, farmer George Ranken found a diverse fossil assemblage while exploring Wellington Caves, New South Wales, Australia. Research history Early reconstruction of Diprotodon by Alice B. Diprotodon has been conjectured by some authors to have been the origin of some aboriginal mythological figures-most notably the bunyip-and aboriginal rock artworks but these ideas are unconfirmable. There is little direct evidence of interactions between Aboriginal Australians and Diprotodon-or any Pleistocene mammalian megafauna. Being a marsupial, the mother may have raised her joey in a pouch on her belly, probably with one of these facing backwards, as in wombats.ĭiprotodon went extinct about 40,000 years ago during the Quaternary extinction event, along with every other Australian animal over 100 kg (220 lb) the extinction was possibly caused by extreme drought conditions and predation pressure from the first Aboriginal Australians, who had co-existed with the megafauna for about 10,000–20,000 years. Diprotodon may have formed polygynous societies, possibly using its powerful incisors to fight for mates or fend off predators, such as the largest-known marsupial carnivore Thylacoleo carnifex. Large herds, usually of females, seem to have marched through a wide range of habitats to find food and water, walking at around 6 km/h (3.7 mph). It is the only marsupial and metatherian that is known to have made seasonal migrations. Such powerful jaws would have allowed it to eat vegetation in bulk, crunching and grinding plant materials such as twigs, buds and leaves of woody plants with its bilophodont teeth. Its jaws may have produced a strong bite force of 2,300 newtons (520 pounds-force) at the long and ever-growing incisor teeth, and over 11,000 newtons (2,500 lb f) at the last molar. The digits were weak most of the weight was probably borne on the wrists and ankles. Diprotodon supported itself on elephant-like legs to travel long distances, and inhabited most of Australia. It grew as large as 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) at the shoulders, over 4 m (13 ft) from head to tail, and possibly weighed almost 3,500 kg (7,700 lb). It is a member of the extinct family Diprotodontidae, which includes other large quadrupedal herbivores. Diprotodon was formally described by English naturalist Richard Owen in 1838, and was the first named Australian fossil mammal, and led Owen to become the foremost authority of his time on other marsupials and Australian megafauna, which were enigmatic to European science.ĭiprotodon is the largest-known marsupial to have ever lived, it greatly exceeds the size of its closest living relatives wombats and koalas. Its remains were first unearthed in 1830 in Wellington Caves, New South Wales, and contemporaneous paleontologists guessed they belonged to rhinos, elephants, hippos or dugongs. The earliest finds date to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago but most specimens are dated to after 110,000 years ago. Diprotodon ( Ancient Greek: "two protruding front teeth") is an extinct genus of marsupial from the Pleistocene of Australia containing one species, D.
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