Scoffing, she disobeyed her parents and was raped by Bigoon.īy the time Tharalkoo escaped and returned to her family, the other girl ducks were laying eggs, so she did the same. Her parents warned her not to swim downriver because Bigoon the Water-rat would have his wicked way with her. The species name, tharalkooschild, is in reference to an Indigenous Australian creation story about the origin of the platypus.ĭuring the Dreaming, Tharalkoo was a head-strong duck inclined to disobey her parents. We can learn about the future of the modern platypus by studying its ancestors. It would have eaten crayfish and other freshwater crustaceans, like the modern platypus does, but its large size and robust dentition would have let it feed also on small vertebrates including the lungfish, frogs, and small turtles that are preserved with it.
So what information can we gather about the life of this giant platypus? Basing the whole picture on one tooth makes it difficult, but the bumps and ridges indicate that it may have fed on wide range of aquatic organisms. The Two Tree site, where the tooth was found, is not actually dated, but the authors estimate the age at between 15 and 5 million years old. The well-preserved fossils from this area have already rewritten the book on marsupial evolution, and now they are doing the same for Australia’s egg-laying mammals (monotremes). Like the skull of Obdurodon dicksoni, this skull was recovered from the limestone formations of the Riversleigh World Heritage Site, where Archer and his colleagues have been working for over 20 years. This species was double the size of the typical mainland platypus. Compare this to the modern platypus, where a large male from Tasmania is lucky to reach 60cm. It is the largest species of platypus ever described the authors estimate it was almost a metre long. What is spectacular about the new discovery, named Obdurodon tharalkooschild, is its size. Everett Kennedy Brown A big platypus with a broad diet
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