Australia & Oceania

Today, Australia contains many wild and wondrous animals, and not much has changed over the past millions of years. The diprotodon is an animal that roamed Australia 5.3 million years ago. It was the largest known marsupial to have ever existed; imagine a wombat, but the size of a hippopotamus and weighing nearly two tons. When Diprotodon Roamed the Earth Diprotodon optatum, meaning “two forward teeth”, were discovered in a cave near Wellington in New South Wales by Major Thomas Mitchell in the 1830s. They were part of a species group known as “Australian megafauna”, meaning that they are 130% larger in body mass than their closest living relative, the wombat or the koala. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"52615","attributes":{"alt":"Diprotodon optatum – a giant marsupial