Scratch marks from a limestone cave in south - western Australia have revealed that the marsupial lion , the largest marsupial carnivore of all clip , was an expert crampon . Most marks are believe to have been made by young lions left behind while their female parent went out to Richard Morris Hunt , but paint a picture the adults could also climb tree .
Many Australians , apparently concluding that the snakes , shark , spiders and crocodile are an insufficient deterrent to tourists , like to scare visitors with narrative of “ drop bears , ” large carnivorous edition of koalas that jump from trees to feast on quarry below . These stories may be not so much wrong as 40,000 class too late . The first arriving Aboriginal people had to cope with just such terrors in the form ofThylacoleo carnifex , the marsupial lion .
Thylacoleo carnifex frame . Gavin Predeaux
Samuel Arman , a Ph.D. scholarly person at Flinders University , told IFLScience that most Australian carnivorous pouched mammal are part of the family that includesquolls , Tasmanian devilsand the extinctTasmanian tiger . However , “ The consensus is thatThylacoleoevolved from a herbivore , ” Arman state . “ They are most aligned with wombats and koalas . ”
The result was some seriously strange adaptations , including tooth so odd they have lead to much bewilderment as to the social lion ’s dieting and life style . Thylacoleowas also distinguished by its front paw , whose semi - apposable ovolo have been suggested as being used for either climbing trees or grip onto prey .
Many fossils ofThylacoleo’sbones and tooth exist , and it is frequently depicted in stone graphics from the first 10,000 years of human line of Australia . Nevertheless , it is much hard to understand the behaviour of a animal so unlike from any still awake today than one whose sound structure is a close conniption with bread and butter species .
InScientific Reports , Arman has provided raw sixth sense into the question of howThylacoleohuntedby study scrawl on the walls of the Tight Entrance Cave , south of Perth . Some scratches may have been made by other specie , but most appear to be the work of juvenile marsupial king of beasts . “ Carrying older pouch youthful while hunting in all probability constrained predatory efficiency or prey size range , ” the newspaper noted . Arman and his supervisorDr . Gavin Prideauxconcluded that the mother Panthera leo belike left their young in the guard of the cave while hunting .
These sugar scar on the wall of a limestone cave in Western Australia prove how well the nonextant marsupial lion could climb . Scale bars 10 cm ( 4 inch ) . Armon and Prideaux
Left to their own machine the unseasoned lions literally rise the walls , and the height of some of the target suggests they were very ripe at it . A minuscule act of large scratches suggests adult lions maintained their climbing power .
Arman tell IFLScience that the climbing capacity might have been a side - event of the prey - catch capacity of the front foot , but it also might have been very useful in an environs with few concealing place and quarry that could out - hop them . A creature weighing 80 - 100 kg ( 180 - 220 pounds ) plummet from an overhead outgrowth would have been lethal for even the jumbo kangaroo of the era , but Arman suppose the fact the lions could climb is not conclusive evidence they used this capacitance for hunting .
