Massive Marsupials Once Swung from Treetops Down Under

Some 15 million years ago, mobs of 150-pound (70-kilogram) marsupials roamed the treetops of Australia's rain forests, researchers say.

Nimbadon lavarackorum belonged to a family of large-bodied marsupials known as the diprotodontids that went extinct about 11,000 years ago. During the diprotodontids' reign in Australia, they ranged from sheep-size wombat like creatures to the mega-herbivore Diprotodon, which stood at 13 feet (4 meters) tall and weighed up to 6,100 pounds (2,800 kg).

Nimbadons were on the small-end of this spectrum, and they lived during the Middle Miocene (about 16 million to 11.6 million years ago). These ancient marsupials are best known from 26 different specimens found at the bottom of a vertical cave in northwestern Queensland, where a group of them apparently plunged to their deaths. In a new study, researchers examined Nimbadon bones and compared them with other species to get a clearer picture of how these ancient animals might have lived.

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