The place we call Australia today was in many ways vastly different 80,000 years ago.
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the animals that would have roamed the plains and inhabited the forests of the continent. Huge marsupials ruled the land, including giant kangaroos, giant koalas and giant wombats.
In a study published recently in Papers in Palaeontology, UQ's Dr Gilbert Price and his team describe the most complete skull of one of these giant wombats, a hitherto poorly known species called Ramsayia magna. This marsupial bore more than a passing resemblance to a giant beaver crossed with a modern hairy-nosed wombat.
