Scientists have pin-pointed when a giant prehistoric wombat-like marsupial roamed Australia, thousands of years ago. The now extinct diprotodon is believed to be the largest marsupial that ever lived, and this fossil is the only one to have ever been discovered in the Northern Territory. It is a discovery that could lead scientists to new revelations about Australia’s history and why diprotodons became extinct.
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00:00A decade ago, an outback station worker stumbled across something unusual.
00:06I thought they'd found a dinosaur, just because there was these big bones that were petrified.
00:12Sticking out of the red soil, a rare fossil of a giant wombat-like marsupial that roamed
00:18Australia thousands of years ago, a now extinct diprotodon.
00:23Excavated and taken to the museum.
00:26We don't know what it was doing there.
00:28It was just a one-off specimen that's been found.
00:30This particular fossil, fondly known as Shirley, is being prepared for exhibition.
00:36So as well as being the most northerly diprotodon found in Australia, it is one of the oldest
00:42ones.
00:43We collected a series of sediment samples from beneath the fossil, from at the same
00:49level as the fossil, and then above the fossil, and using OSL dating, Optically Stimulated
00:55Luminescence Dating, we were able to say when that sediment was last exposed to daylight.
01:00The specialist found Shirley is between 112,000 and 123,000 years old.
01:07That dating has allowed us to now start looking into what was happening in northern Australia
01:14in regard to diprotodons.
01:15We were interested in its age because it's very far north for a diprotodon discovery.
01:21Related to Australia's modern-day wombats, diprotodons were the largest marsupial to
01:26ever live.
01:27It was about the size of a white rhinoceros, but without the horns.
01:31So it was large, four-footed, slow-moving, and it was a plant-eater.
01:37Shirley's now under the microscope again.
01:40We are now using handheld tools to carefully clean off all the adherent clay and rock that
01:49is sticking to the skeleton, so to make it nice and clean and ready for display.
01:54A complex process that could take longer than a year before she's ready for display.