The World’s Largest Marsupial Found In Queensland

on July 9, 2011
Featured in News to Know

A nearly complete skeleton of the world’s biggest marsupial, the Diprotodon, was unearthed at Floraville Station in Queensland. This specimen, 6-½ feet tall and 11 feet long, is estimated to have weighed three tons.

Secular paleontologists believe Diprotodons lived in Australia between two million and 50,000 years ago, although this one has not yet been dated. These giant marsupials co-existed with people during the Pleistocene era. The cause of their extinction is a mystery, the leading candidates being climate change and over-hunting.

Other fossilized megafauna found nearby have included giant kangaroos and a big lizard called a megalania. (Megafauna are huge animals native to a particular region.) Paleontologists are hopeful the area will turn out to be a fossil graveyard containing more well-preserved specimens.

Fossils of animals unique to Australia are explained by post-Noah’s Flood catastrophes. After the global Flood animals migrated to various parts of the globe. Some species were evidently cut off after arrival, perhaps by obliteration of a land bridge. Post-Flood events such as localized catastrophic flooding explain the rapid burial and preservation of animals within their native habitats. Some Diprotodon fossils have been found in groups consistent with their sudden catastrophic demise.

The Pleistocene era’s geology, despite traditional secular dates, corresponds to the Ice Age, a time when severe climate changes in the wake of the global Flood would have affected even places not touched by glaciation.

The geology of some of Australia’s fossil graveyards—small patches of thin sedimentary outwash deposits and limestone caves filled with fossil-rich sedimentary rock—are consistent with local post-Flood catastrophes. Queensland’s famous fossil graveyard at Riversleigh is a good example. The severe climate changes which paleontologists suggest as the likely cause of megafauna extinction would likewise be expected in the post-Flood environment. The Pleistocene era’s geology, despite traditional secular dates, corresponds to the Ice Age, a time when severe climate changes in the wake of the global Flood would have affected even places not touched by glaciation.

The giant wombat-like fossil will be joining those at the Riversleigh Fossil Centre. Such fossils are a memorial to the global Flood described in Genesis.

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