Skip to navigation | Skip to content  Desert dig uncovers
'weird' fossil kangaroos  marsupial lion  A marsupial lion
fossil recovered from the cave under the Nullarbor (Pic: Darren
Mok, WA Museum)  Kangaroos with horn-like protrusions are one of
several new species of megafauna discovered in a vast
underground cache of fossils under the Australia's Nullarbor
desert.  The digs, some begun in 2002 and others recently,
uncovered five new species of kangaroo, and the first complete
intact skeleton of the marsupial lion, Thylacoleo. The digs were
co-ordinated by the Western Australian Museum in Perth.  "Its an
excellent discovery," said Dr Gavin Prideaux, a palaeontologist
at Flinders University in Adelaide, who is an expert in
kangaroos.  "Our knowledge is best for younger sites, and it is
rare to find new things from the last two million years - let
alone finding five new species of kangaroos. It's a bit of a
'trip' really, especially if one or two are really weird," he
quipped.  Samples collected for radiometri