New extinct family of giant wombat relatives discovered in Australian
desert

Date:
June 29, 2020
Source:
University of New South Wales
Summary:
A giant marsupial that roamed prehistoric Australia 25 million
years ago is so different from its wombat cousins that scientists
have had to create a new family to accommodate it.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The unique remains of a prehistoric, giant wombat-like marsupial --
Mukupirna nambensis -- that was unearthed in central Australia are so
different from all other previously known extinct animals that it has
been placed in a whole new family of marsupials.


========================================================================== Mukupirna -- meaning "big bones" in the Dieri and Malyangapa Aboriginal languages -- is described in a paper published today in Scientific Reports
by an international team of palaeontologists including researchers from
the UNSW Sydney, Salford University in the UK, Griffith University in
Brisbane, the Natural History Museum in London, and the American Museum
of Natural History in New York. The researchers reveal that the partial
skull and most of the skeleton discovered originally in 1973 belonged
to an animal more than four times the size of any living wombats today
and may have weighed about 150kg.

An analysis of Mukupirna's evolutionary relationships reveals that
although it was most closely related to wombats, it is so different from
all known wombats as well as other marsupials, that it had to be placed
in its own unique family, Mukupirnidae.

LUCKY BREAK UNSW Science's Professor Mike Archer, a co-author on the
paper, was part of the original international team of palaeontologists
along with Professor Dick Tedford, another co-author, that found the
skeleton in 1973 in the clay floor of Lake Pinpa -- a remote, dry salt
lake east of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. He says their
discovery of Mukupirna was in part due to good luck after an unusual
change in local conditions exposed the 25 million-year-old fossil deposit
on the floor of the dry salt lake.

"It was an extremely serendipitous discovery because in most years the
surface of this dry lake is covered by sands blown or washed in from
the surrounding hills," he says.



==========================================================================
"But because of rare environmental conditions prior to our arrival that
year, the fossil-rich clay deposits were fully exposed to view. And this unexpected view was breathtaking.

"On the surface, and just below we found skulls, teeth, bones and in some cases, articulated skeletons of many new and exotic kinds of mammals. As
well, there were the teeth of extinct lungfish, skeletons of bony fish
and the bones of many kinds of water birds including flamingos and ducks.

"These animals ranged from tiny carnivorous marsupials about the size
of a mouse right up to Mukupirna which was similar in size to a living
black bear.

It was an amazingly rich fossil deposit full of extinct animals that we'd
never seen before." GENTLE GIANT Professor Archer says when Mukupirna's skeleton was first discovered just below the surface, nobody had any
idea what kind of animal it was because it was solidly encased in clay.



==========================================================================
"We found it by probing the dry flat surface of the Lake with a thin metal pole, like acupuncturing the skin of Mother Earth. We only excavated
downwards into the clay if the pole contacted something hard below the
surface -- and in this case it turned out to be the articulated skeleton
of a most mysterious new creature." The researchers' recent study
of the partial skull and skeleton reveals that despite its bear-like
size, Mukupirna was probably a gentle giant. Its teeth indicate that it subsisted only on plants, while its powerful limbs suggest it was probably
a strong digger. However, a close examination of its features revealed
the creature was more likely suited to scratch-digging, and unlikely to
have been a true burrower like modern wombats, the authors say.

Lead author on the paper Dr Robin Beck from the University of Salford
says Mukupirna is one of the best-preserved marsupials to have emerged
from late Oligocene Australia (about 25 million years ago).

"Mukupirna clearly was an impressive, powerful beast, at least three
times larger than modern wombats," he says. "It probably lived in an open forest environment without grasses, and developed teeth that would have
allowed it to feed on sedges, roots, and tubers that it could have dug up
with its powerful front legs." SERIOUSLY STRANGE Griffith University's Associate Professor Julien Louys, who co-authored the study, said "the description of this new family adds a huge new piece to the puzzle about
the diversity of ancient, and often seriously strange marsupials that
preceded those that rule the continent today." The scientists examined
how body size has evolved in vombatiform marsupials - - the taxonomic
group that includes Mukupirna, wombats, koalas and their fossil relatives
-- and showed that body weights of 100 kg or more evolved at least six
times over the last 25 million years. The largest known vombatiform
marsupial was the relatively recent Diprotodon, which weighed over 2
tonnes and survived until at least 50,000 years ago.

"Koalas and wombats are amazing animals" says Dr Beck, "but animals like Mukupirna show that their extinct relatives were even more extraordinary,
and many of them were giants." The original party that discovered
Mukupirna in 1973 was an international exploration team led by Professor
Dick Tedford from the American Museum of Natural History along with palaeontologists from the South Australian Museum (Neville Pledge),
Queensland Museum (where Professor Archer was Curator of Fossil & Modern Mammals at the time), Flinders University (Professor Rod Wells) and the Australian Geological Survey Organisation (Mike Plane and Richard Brown).

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpiiTz0Ztvg&feature=emb_logo

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_New_South_Wales. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Robin M. D. Beck, Julien Louys, Philippa Brewer, Michael Archer,
Karen H.

Black, Richard H. Tedford. A new family of diprotodontian marsupials
from the latest Oligocene of Australia and the evolution of wombats,
koalas, and their relatives (Vombatiformes). Scientific Reports,
2020; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-66425-8 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200629120218.htm

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