Australia's Vanished Beasts
The Quinkan
Quinkana fortirostrum
In 1970, deep inside Australia's Tea Tree Cave, a caver discovered a
skull lying upside down on the cavern floor. It turned out to be
from a large, previously unknown crocodilian. The reptile resembled
an extinct type of croc called a ziphodont, whose snouts were both
broad and deep. (The snouts of most of today's crocs are broader
than they are deep.) The caver's find was subsequently named after
the "quinkans," mythical humanoids of the Dreamtime, the creation
time in Aboriginal mythology. Growing to perhaps 10 feet in length,
the land-based quinkan was one of the largest carnivores of the
Australian Pleistocene and probably was capable, like the giant
goanna, of taking down the largest marsupials, including
diprotodontids.