Biology Ancient Australia (Extinct Megafauna, Dinosaurs etc)

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Not quite Australia, but across the Tasman Sea: fossils of a giant 1m tall, 7kg parrot discovered in New Zealand :eek:

www.abc.net.au

Meet Heracles, the metre-tall giant parrot that once called New Zealand home

Fossilised drumsticks discovered on New Zealand's South Island belonged to a giant parrot that stood about 1 metre tall and weighed about 7 kilograms. Dubbed Heracles, it is the first supersized parrot found anywhere in the world.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
 
Werewolf said:
Not quite Australia, but across the Tasman Sea: fossils of a giant 1m tall, 7kg parrot discovered in New Zealand :eek:

www.abc.net.au

Meet Heracles, the metre-tall giant parrot that once called New Zealand home

Fossilised drumsticks discovered on New Zealand's South Island belonged to a giant parrot that stood about 1 metre tall and weighed about 7 kilograms. Dubbed Heracles, it is the first supersized parrot found anywhere in the world.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
Click to expand...

Article doesn't say what these giant parrots fed on. IT does suggest that these birds used their beaks to climb trees. One would think that there was a huge source of food - large nuts and fruit. Once the beak becomes very large eating small seeds becomes a problem. (Giantism has many drivers and has been seen occuring on islands even today)

Polly wanna cracker - Heracles can have anything it wants.
 
Werewolf said:
Not quite Australia, but across the Tasman Sea: fossils of a giant 1m tall, 7kg parrot discovered in New Zealand :eek:

www.abc.net.au

Meet Heracles, the metre-tall giant parrot that once called New Zealand home

Fossilised drumsticks discovered on New Zealand's South Island belonged to a giant parrot that stood about 1 metre tall and weighed about 7 kilograms. Dubbed Heracles, it is the first supersized parrot found anywhere in the world.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
Click to expand...
Your parrot will become breakfast to Penguinzilla - https://www.livescience.com/newfound-ancient-monster-penguin.html
 

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These Sthenurine kangaroos were of similar height to modern kangaroos, but considerably heavier:

www.abc.net.au

A jaw made to gnaw: Ancient kangaroos had strong skulls and a serious bite

Giant sthenurine kangaroos had skulls built to withstand the forces produced by their powerful bites, which could have allowed them to eat tougher foods like mature leaves, stems and branches.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
 
Recent article about Palorchestes https://phys.org/news/2019-09-ancient-australia-home-strange-marsupial.htm describing the limbs. The author believes the forelimbs were disproportionately large with elbow fixed at 100 degrees. I would like to know how many elbow specimens they have, if it's only one there is a possibility it is diseased. She speculates the large claws and odd fore limbs made it able to slash tough undergrowth. Other possibility's include Termite mounds or even tree trunks. Its an animal with rone of the most extraordinary skulls, ever. This is Peter Trusler's drawing, done as part of his Phd reconstructing the head of the animal.

pal-skull.jpg

Peter reconstructed the head like this:
palorchestes-head.jpg
​
Many reconstructions give it a trunk much like a Tapir. This is because of the incredible size of the size of the nasal cavities. Peter says, (and who am I to argue with a man who did his PhD reconstructing the beasty) that there is none of the usual boney evidence of a trunk,eg lines of attachment or vascular foraminae (holes) that you would expect if there were a trunk.













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Werewolf said:
Not quite Australia, but across the Tasman Sea: fossils of a giant 1m tall, 7kg parrot discovered in New Zealand :eek:

www.abc.net.au

Meet Heracles, the metre-tall giant parrot that once called New Zealand home

Fossilised drumsticks discovered on New Zealand's South Island belonged to a giant parrot that stood about 1 metre tall and weighed about 7 kilograms. Dubbed Heracles, it is the first supersized parrot found anywhere in the world.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au
Click to expand...
Polly wants....to crack your skull.
 
Snake_Baker said:
ancientnews.net

Archaeology Places Humans in Australia 120,000-Years-Ago

Shell middens and a potential ancient hearth add to growing evidence of a much deeper human occupation period in Australasia (prehistoric Sahul). A meticulously detailed 11 years research program h…
ancientnews.net ancientnews.net
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Very possible.

Populations of homo sapiens migrated to the Levant and to Europe between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago, and possibly in earlier waves as early as 185,000 years ago. An article by Steven R. Holen in April 2017 proposes that a 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA is the earliest evidence of human occupation of North America.

Both sites could be either modern human or some other archaic human species such as Denisovans. DNA sequencing has concluded that Denisovan and modern humans diverged to about 800,000 years ago. David Reich of Harvard University and Mark Stoneking of the Planck Institute team found genetic evidence that Denisovan ancestry is shared also by Australian Aboriginies, Melanesians and smaller scattered groups of people in Southeast Asia.
 
Roylion said:
Very possible.

Populations of homo sapiens migrated to the Levant and to Europe between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago, and possibly in earlier waves as early as 185,000 years ago. An article by Steven R. Holen in April 2017 proposes that a 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA is the earliest evidence of human occupation of North America.

Both sites could be either modern human or some other archaic human species such as Denisovans. DNA sequencing has concluded that Denisovan and modern humans diverged to about 800,000 years ago. David Reich of Harvard University and Mark Stoneking of the Planck Institute team found genetic evidence that Denisovan ancestry is shared also by Australian Aboriginies, Melanesians and smaller scattered groups of people in Southeast Asia.
Click to expand...
Snake_Baker said:
ancientnews.net

Archaeology Places Humans in Australia 120,000-Years-Ago

Shell middens and a potential ancient hearth add to growing evidence of a much deeper human occupation period in Australasia (prehistoric Sahul). A meticulously detailed 11 years research program h…
ancientnews.net ancientnews.net
Click to expand...
Mitochondrial DNA evidence suggests the ancestors of the aboriginals left Africa about 85-80000 years ago. This is considered fairly strong evidence and is consistent with an arrival in Oz about 75000 years ago. If these sites turn out to be kosher with their dating then they must belong to an earlier group of homos. The evidence at the sites is pretty soft, so there is a good chance it is wrong. For what it's worth, there are aboriginal myths relating to interacting with 'little people' and larger folks as well, perhaps one or both of these were here first. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I don't think many scientists accept Steven Holen's claims. The dating is correct, it's just that the broken bones and stones don't provide convincing evidence of human actions, perhaps a bit like these sites.
 
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www.pnas.org

Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia

The transition from simple, microscopic forms to the abundance of complex animal life that exists today is recorded within soft-bodied fossils of the Ediacara Biota (571 to 539 Ma). Perhaps most critically is the first appearance of bilaterians—animals with two openings and a through-gut—during...
www.pnas.org www.pnas.org
 

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Snake_Baker said:
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www.pnas.org

Discovery of the oldest bilaterian from the Ediacaran of South Australia

The transition from simple, microscopic forms to the abundance of complex animal life that exists today is recorded within soft-bodied fossils of the Ediacara Biota (571 to 539 Ma). Perhaps most critically is the first appearance of bilaterians—animals with two openings and a through-gut—during...
www.pnas.org www.pnas.org
Click to expand...
Given it's rice sized, it's not quite megafauna but it's certainly the oldest possible extinct Australian fauna. Paleo's have been looking for the critters that made the burrows in the Ediacaran sediments for a long time, believing they were likely to be bilaterians, and the origin of everything from worms, insects, vertebrates and Andrew Bolt. The SA museum has a fabulous display of Ediacaran fauna, you can get right up close to the specimens, recommend it to all. These critters could be our great great great (x few billion greats) parents. Amazing.
 
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The Covid 19 lockdown has had me hunting around for some paleo books to read and I found Tom & Pat Rich's 'classic' work from 1991 - Vertebrate palaeontology of Australasia - you can download it from here https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/60647#/summary - click on the PDF icon on the right. It's one for the scholars, but has a lot of source materials (eg the bones) but also the Koonawarra feather assemblage discussed in earlier posts, and quite a few nice illustrations. Peter's reconstruction of megalania is on page 756, including the skeletal reconstruction upon which he based the work. A colour version of the image is here - https://phys.org/news/2016-01-ancient-extinction-giant-australian-bird.html - the article about evidence for cooking of Genyornis eggs is interesting in itself, but I believe incorrect in it's assertion that these were Genyornis eggs.
 
I have been trying to learn some vertebrate evolution during the lockdown, I've been concentrating on the mammals. The very old mammal ancestors (pelycosaurs) are so cool with there sail backs, and the late cretaceous period when our ancestors lived under the claw of the dinos is really interesting and confusing. Australia role in this is very interesting if unclear, but is changing.

The standard story of mammalian evolution in Australia involved the marsupials getting here about 55+ mya via Antarctica, around the time Australia split off. This is based on the oldest Australian marsupial fossil Djarthia murgonensis from Murgon specimens see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001858 Most paleos seem regard the Murgon specimens are around 55 mya, though the dating of the actual fossil is 51.09–71.77 mya (95% confidence)

The first placentals in Oz were thought to be bats, tens of millions of years ago, however this date has been progressively pushed back with new finds, now as far as 54 mya with Australonycteris clarkae - see https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/australia-over-time/extinct-animals/australonycteris-clarkae/ This is in a similar age range of the oldest bat specimens from Asia (Hassianycteris kumari fossilworks.org/?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=178572) and North America (Icaronycteris Index & Onychonycteris finneyi - the later appeared a pretty derived form in regards flight, but thought to lack echolocation - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onychonycteris Prior to these animals there basically is nothing including protobats. The problem is bats leave really, really poor fossils. You will find some suggesting megabats & microbats aren't closely related and evolved twice, suggesting flight evolved twice. The idea was the megabats derived from the primate line. This is wrong, genetic evidence puts them clearly together in the superorder Laurasiatheria, with its sister taxon Fereuungulata, which includes carnivorans, pangolins, odd-toed ungulates, even-toed ungulates, and cetaceans. Note- last part of the sentence copied straight from the wiki and keeps links to the long scientific names.

Leaving Bats to finish the story of the arrival of the placentals, about 5 million years ago the rodents started arriving, and it's been downhill ever since for the local marsupials, culminating with the arrival of us, with dogs and cats etc.

The oldest fossils of placental mammals in the world consist of two species of a single genus, Prokennalestes, from Mongolia. Prokennalestes is from the early Cretaceous, about 115 million years ago which was very consistent with the standard story.

However, one of Tom Rich's later finds out of the explosion of stuff out of Dinosaur cave was Ausktribosphenos nyktos, which appears to be a placental mammal, upending the traditional story. It too, is early Cretaceous, approximately the same age as Prokennalestes. See https://the-earth-story.com/post/134498716614/ausktribosphenos-nyktos-known-from-a-jaw (has reconstructed picture) and here http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/rich/tomrich.htm

The earliest monotreme known is 123 mya, Teinolophos trusslei found at Flat Rocks, Victoria, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teinolophos and the oldest marsupial (metatherian) is thought to be Sinodelphys szalayi from around 125 million years old. It was discovered and described in 2003 in rocks of the Yixian Formation in Liaoning Province, China. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinodelphys and http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/ancient/AncientRepublish_1008521.htm

Marsupials from their origin somewhere in Asia, spread to South America, which was possibly connected to North America at around 65 mya. There are definite marsupial fossils in Montana from around 64 mya. Asian marsupials eventually died off completely, followed by most in the Americas. They had a bit of a blast for a while in South America, radiating into some large and impressive beasties. Marsupials from South America, through Antarctica and associated islands arrived here arrived by 55 mya, arriving back to where we started Djarthia murgonensis.

Note: there are fossils of both placentals (oldest 55 mya) and marsupials (30-40 mya) in Antarctica. See https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pala.12121 & https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1027357927460

So the story for Mammals is far more complex than we thought, with many questions left for the scholars. Bat evolution prior to 52 million years ago is a complete mystery.
 
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Atlascopcosaurus loadsi is an ornithopod from Dinosaur Cove that was discovered after the initial blast of discovery by tunnelling 60m further into the dig with equipment from Atlas Copco, hence the genus name. The wiki has a pretty good summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlascopcosaurus

Atlascopcosaurus_loadsi.jpg ​

The wiki has this sculptural reconstruction done in Poland as it's main image, which clearly demonstrates they have had similar problems rendering convincing hair as I have. I'm not sure about bare heads in cold climates, even little dino brains and eyeballs may benefit from a bit of warmth. Slight aside, the Great White shark is endothermic, using a rete mirablie (network of blood vessels used to capture, recycle and spread body heat from it's paraspinal muscles) to keep control of body temperature, it has a similar network around it's eyeballs and brain to keep them warm. So keeping high performance neurons warm in cold climates is important, so I expect these guys to have some head covering.

I really only brought Atlascopcosaurus up as Peter is currently doing a reconstruction of Atlascopcosaurus, he's going to do it with 'fur', mainly based on Kulindadromeus, which I posted about on the pervious page. I think this is the first time he's done an official reconstruction of a dino with fur/feathers rather than simply scales/scutes. I think the wiki may be wrong about the size of these ornithopods, Leaellynasaurus I think should be smaller, certainly Peter indicated Atlascopcosaurus was a bit larger.
 
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Another new Cape Otway Dino, this time a therapod, allegedly an elaphrosaur, specimen is a single vertebrae only found amongst old specimens. See https://www.theguardian.com/science...roamed-the-polar-world-unearthed-in-australia See also the wiki about the best known example of the rather odd sub family Elaphrosaurinae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaphrosaurus A non-furry reconstruction is below.

900-Elaphrosaurus_(flipped).jpg ​

Limusaurus is another member of the sub-family and this had a toothless jaw, which makes for some speculation that perhaps these therapods changed to greens - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limusaurus
 
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A mega megafauna dig reported from South Walker creek in the Fitzroy basin of Queensland. See https://theconversation.com/humans-...s-as-long-as-cars-in-ancient-australia-138534 This is a probably the richest assembly of northern megafauna with a large diversity of flora & fauna. For some of these animals these are the youngest finds to date, plus there appear to be some new species. Because of the nature of the material the paleo's can get a look the environment and the changes it was undergoing. The abstract from the original article in nature.

Explanations for the Upper Pleistocene extinction of megafauna from Sahul (Australia and New Guinea) remain unresolved. Extinction hypotheses have advanced climate or human-driven scenarios, in spite of over three quarters of Sahul lacking reliable biogeographic or chronologic data. Here we present new megafauna from north-eastern Australia that suffered extinction sometime after 40,100 (±1700) years ago. Megafauna fossils preserved alongside leaves, seeds, pollen and insects, indicate a sclerophyllous forest with heathy understorey that was home to aquatic and terrestrial carnivorous reptiles and megaherbivores, including the world’s largest kangaroo. Megafauna species diversity is greater compared to southern sites of similar age, which is contrary to expectations if extinctions followed proposed migration routes for people across Sahul. Our results do not support rapid or synchronous human-mediated continental-wide extinction, or the proposed timing of peak extinction events. Instead, megafauna extinctions coincide with regionally staggered spatio-temporal deterioration in hydroclimate coupled with sustained environmental change.

Note Sahul refers to continental Australia, Tasmania, PNG and surrounding islands.
 
The Juukan rock shelters were the only inland Australian sites that documented human activity through to the last Ice Age. RioTinto just performed an act of cultural vandalism with the permission of the WA government and blew them up. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/...ear-old-aboriginal-site-expresses-no-regrets/

This was one of the longest occupied site by humans in inland Australia, believed to be 46,000 years old. A number of specimens were removed prior to the destruction but it was noted there was a lot more to be studied. Have a look at RioTinto propaganda on twitter, hypocrisy knows no bounds.
 
Finally, something big, and naturally from the home of the big pineapple. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06...ing-theropod-identified-southern-qld/12366880

kaypentus.jpg ​

A large Allosaurus, represented by an 80 cm footprint from Jurassic coal deposits in QLD. 3 metres at the hip and looks about 9 to 10 m long. This has been given the ichnogenus name Kayentapus. Trace fossils, like footprints, are given genus and sometimes species names similar to living species, called ichnogenus and ichnospecies. FYI the study of trace fossils is the delightfully named Ichnology, and for some reason your child wants to grow up to be one, then they would be an ichnologists. For some reasons these names make me feel itchy.
 
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I visited the Canowindra Ancient Fish Museum, they have Devonian fossils from a site 11km away that is one of 3 known large Devonian assemblages in the world. The others are in the Canadian artic and Antarctica. There website has a 5min video chatting with 'Sir David' Home (ageoffishes.org.au) which is interesting as always. I was particularly interested in seeing the surface patterning of Bothriolepis, these are one of the 'classic' armoured fish of the Devonian. There certainly a lot of specimens. I sometimes found it is easier to understand what you are seeing looking at the relief cast. There are 8 or so common species split between bony fish, 'lung fish' and placoderms (armoured fish) Bothriolepis belongs to a group called the 'antiarch placoderms', which is a great name.

Inspired by findings I manufactured my own reconstruction, the one at the front is finished, the one at the back is under constuction.

both4r.jpg ​
 
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