Growth series of Nimbadon skulls (image credit: Karen Black).

World-wide interest in Riversleigh fossils

By Phil Creaser
04 August 2010

Following the publication of a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, there has been media interest from around the globe in the ground-breaking study by Dr Karen Black and the team from the Palaeosciences Group at UNSW.

As reported on the UNSW Science website, her study of the skulls of 26 different-aged individuals ranging from pouch-young to adults, belonging to Nimbadon lavarackorum.

This sheep-size marsupial herbivore had weird and wicked-looking recurved claws that suggest it may have spent time browsing leaves in trees, perhaps more like enormous arboreal koalas than terrestrial wombats.

This addition to the extraordinary biodiversity of Australia’s prehistoric creatures demonstrates again the reasons why Riversleigh was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1994. Work at the Riversleigh site is supported by the mining company Xstrata North Queensland and the Australian Research Council.

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