Computer generated graphic showing what
Thylacoleo may have looked like.
Image: copyright 2007 Western
Australian Museum
Nine ‘complete’ skeletons of Leo, short for Thylacoleo carnifex, were unearthed in May 2002 by former WA Museum palaeontologist John Long and cavers from WA, South Australia and Victoria.
Until then, its existence was known from a few jaw and finger bones, first examined by British anatomist Sir Richard Owen, a contemporary of Charles Darwin who coined the word ‘dinosaur’.
The well-preserved skeletal material was found with remains of short-faced kangaroos up to 3m tall and smaller tree kangaroos, which lived in Australia more than 500,000 years ago.
The biggest, stealthiest mammalian predator was Leo. It weighed up to 200kg and was armed with retractable claws and secateur-like cheek teeth used to tear apart kangaroos and diprotodons, the world’s biggest and heaviest herbivore.
The lion-sized predator that terrorised the outback for many hundreds of thousands of years before humans arrived was the world’s most specialised mammalian predator, occupying a similar niche to the saber-toothed cats of North America.
Initially, it was thought to be a melon-eating creature descended from either the family of the pygmy possums or wombats.
But it turned out to be much more.
Owen named Leo from its big teeth. Its name means ‘pouched meat-eating marsupial lion’. Similar in size to African lions, it had a cat-like skull and the teeth of a predator. It ate other animals.
Described as the lion king of prehistoric Australia, Leo, like a modern leopard, was capable of dragging a carcass up a tree to feed.
Its most striking feature is its teeth, which palaeontologist Rod Wells says are “unprecedented in the mammalian world”.
Leo’s front teeth, supposedly used to carve up its prey, are similar to those found in possums and wombats. Kangaroos also have them.
Yet, Leo boasted a strong bite, its dentition equipped with razor-sharp cheek teeth, called carnassials, which could slice through flesh.
Leo’s other anatomical feature was its sharp thumb claws, which were not only opposable, but rotatable.
Sheathed in fur hoods, just like a house cat, its claws extended from the end of forearms that, like human forearms, could swivel and reach out to grab its prey in a ‘death hug’.
Leo’s thylacine-like tail also offers palaeontologists clues to how the animal dispatched prey. The idea is Leo could prop itself up like a kangaroo as it tore away at its prey.
Sporting large olfactory lobes, possibly the largest of any marsupial, Leo could zero in on the chemical signatures of prey over long distances, day or night.
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