New species of 'marsupial lion' found in Australia
A new species of "marsupial lion" extinct in Australia for 19 million years has been discovered at one of the most significant fossil deposits in the world, researchers said Thursday. The predator, with blade-like, flesh-cutting premolars used to tear up prey, stalked the country's rainforests during the late Oligocene to early Miocene era. "This meat-eating marsupial is estimated to have been about the size of a dog and weighed around 23 kilograms," said Anna Gillespie, lead author of a study on the find in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.