RIVERSLEIGH’S AUSSIE MEGAFAUNA
In a far-flung pocket of Queensland’s Gulf Country, a little-known world heritage area preserves the final resting place of petrified, prehistoric Aussie megafauna. Here lies Baru wickeni — a fearsome, five metre-long freshwater crocodile with blade-like teeth and an insatiable appetite — and beside him, a 300kg thunderbird nicknamed ‘Big Bird’ that once stood taller than a human.
The other 25 million-year-old fossilised creatures unearthed at Riversleigh are fantastical and strange: meat-eating kangaroos, giant wombats, and a marsupial lion discovered inside the mouth of a fossilised crocodile. Add to this an almost complete skeleton of a thylacine, Tassie’s own fabled devil, and eight-metre long pythons, and you begin to realise why
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