黑料网大事记 scientists have discovered new species of bizarre, extinct 'hammer-toothed' carnivorous marsupials that likely crunched snails in Australia's ancient rainforests.
Australia鈥檚 diversity of ancient mammals has gotten a little bit bigger, with 黑料网大事记 scientists discovering more extinct marsupials at a site in northern Queensland, including two new species.
The new malleodectids 鈥 literally 鈥渉ammer teeth鈥 鈥 are thought to be a bizarre subset of carnivorous marsupials that fed largely on hard shelled organisms like snails.聽
Around 15 million years ago, a vast rainforest covered pretty much all of Australia, providing habitat for a galaxy of strange and wonderful mammals, many of which have long since gone extinct, including the malleodectids.
Marvels of the Miocene
15 million years ago the Earth was in the middle of the Miocene Epoch, and Australia was about three degrees warmer than it is today and saw a lot more rainfall.聽
The supercontinent of Gondwana had broken up, Australia had separated from South America and Antarctica, and the Australian landscape was about as diverse as the Amazon, or the tropical rainforests of Borneo are today.
鈥淒uring this period, we see the most species diversity in the Australian fossil record for mammals,鈥 lead author of the study published in the and 黑料网大事记 palaeontologist Dr Timothy Churchill said.
鈥淚t was really a golden age of mammal evolution in Australia.鈥
It was in this world that a marsupial about the size of a modern quoll, with sharp front teeth and a pair of big, smooth, hammer-like rear premolars for smashing through the hard shells of snails, fell into a limestone sinkhole in what is now the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in far north Queensland and died.聽
The lime-rich water at Riversleigh would have started fossilising the creature almost immediately, adding it to the many thousands of animals preserved there.聽
鈥淚t really is one of the most amazing fossil sites in Australia,鈥 Dr Churchill said.
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