Look out for the killer kangaroo!

Ruu_Old

Anyone going to Oz anytime soon? From the story here :eek:

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Forget cute, cuddly marsupials. A team of Australian palaeontologists say they have found the fossilised remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a "demon duck of doom".

A University of New South Wales team said the fearsome fossils were among 20 previously unknown species uncovered at a site in northwest Queensland state.

Professor Michael Archer said on Wednesday the remains of a meat-eating kangaroo with wolf-like fangs were found as well as a galloping kangaroo with long forearms that could not hop like a modern kangaroo.

"Because they didn't hop, these were galloping kangaroos, with big, powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines (fangs) like wolves," Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.

Vertebrate palaeontologist Sue Hand said modern kangaroos look almost nothing like their ferocious forebears, which lived between 10 million and 20 million years ago.

The species found at the dig had "well muscled-in teeth, not for grazing. These things had slicing crests that could have crunched through bone and sliced off flesh", Hand said.

The team also found prehistoric lungfish and large duck-like birds.

"Very big birds ... more like ducks, earned the name 'demon duck of doom', some at least may have been carnivorous as well," Hand told ABC radio.

Archer said the team was studying the fossils to better understand how they were affected by changing climates in the Miocene epoch between 5 million and 24 million years ago.

shanew

for some reason this reminds me of a Gary Larson cartoon...

'The Demon Duck of Doom' meets the 'Killer Kangaroo" !!



Shane.

Dooom

Crazy Australians, what'll they invent next?

Dyr

http://freespace.virgin.net/mike.spezzano/FASTSHOW/carl.wav tbh

Archeron

Cant wait for Steve Irwin to figure out how to travel through time and stick his head in the mouth of one of these boyos.

Just to "really p*ss it off" of course.

Splinter

wonder if some little rag from ireland will try pet the thing if she finds one?

Chakar

Sounds like it would have fitted in just grand in the film "The Mummy"

GerryRyan

"wonder if some little rag from ireland will try pet the thing if she finds one?"

ROFL - not before hopping over a few fences and sticking her hand through a fence ... only in Ireland

jobonar

Skippy wouldnt have been so cute if he was 1 of those things!!!

Ruu_Old

"Isn't she a BEAUTY, I'm just going to show you how gentle she is with me!"*
..."ARGH get her off me throat!"

Splinter

Ruu wrote:

"Isn't she a BEAUTY, I'm just going to show you how gentle she is with me!"*
..."ARGH get her off me throat!"

backs away from Ruu's sig....

Black Swan

Reminds me of that humourous scene in the Crocadile Dundie film where he props his rifle up on the shoulder of a dead kangaroo and starts shooting back at the hunters.

Jumpy

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

Reminds me of that humourous scene in the Crocadile Dundie film where he props his rifle up on the shoulder of a dead kangaroo and starts shooting back at the hunters.

ITS GOT A GUN!

Jumpy

Kangaroos can kill. They have done it before, if you piss off a big Red it can rip your guts out.
They stand taller than me. Scary bastards they are.

Nehpets

they're good at boxing

Feral Mutant

Might be wrong but I'm reasinably certain I read before that there used to be a type of giant (or larger than modern day) kangaroo, then humans came.

Dooom

Me with metal bar > Kangaroo.