A new model of Thylacoleo, Australia's once-fearsome carnivorous marsupial lion, will be unveiled at the Victoria Cave visitor complex at the World Heritage-listed Naracoorte Caves next week (9 December).
The updated fossil model, a new installation at the Caves' Megafauna Experience, features for the first time the missing tail bone and other anatomical features of the backbone revealed by Flinders University Palaeontology researchers in recent years.
National Parks and Wildlife Service Naracoorte Caves Site Manager, Thomas Shortt, says the display will be another way to mark the 30 years since the fossil caves were recognised as having World Heritage status.
"We're excited to head towards the Christmas school holidays with this new display that will extend the legacy of one of the original Victoria Fossil Cave skeletons found in the late 1970s," he says.
"Thylacoleo is a symbol of the Naracoorte Caves and has long been associated with the site.
"To be able to provide an updated skeleton to our guides to interpret for visitors on tour through the Victoria Fossil Cave is going to be an amazing opportunity to pass on information about this intriguing animal."
The limestone caves at Naracoorte have acted as pitfall traps for at least 500,000 years, preserving some of the most complete fossils spanning several ice ages and the arrival of humans in the area when Australia's megafauna reigned, including the apex predator Thylacoleo carnifex (known as the marsupial lion).
Flinders University Emeritus Professor Rod Wells, who was one of the first explorers to discover the scientifically important fossil chamber in Victoria Fossil Cave more than 50 years ago, has supported the latest reconstruction.
"Thylacoleo was among the first megafauna skeletons discovered in a quarry at Naracoorte in the 1950s. Then in 1969 the Victoria Cave chamber yielded sufficient articulated remains of Thylacoleo to reconstruct most of the skeleton," says Professor Wells, from the College of Science and Engineering.
"Casts of these bones by volunteer, the late Edwin Bailey, formed the partial skeleton that has been on display at the Victoria Fossil Cave for many years.
"More recent discoveries at Naracoorte in 2006, and caves on the Nullarbor in Western Australia in 2010, have finally allowed us to assemble the first complete skeleton of Thylacoleo - including the missing tail. This re-assessment of the biomechanics and behaviour has showcased a dramatic picture of this ferocious ambush predator."
The new cast, built by Flinders University Palaeontology Lab technical officer Carey Burke, with student volunteers, as well as scans taken by PhD student Jacob van Zoulen, features the new ambush posture to create a dramatic display for the Victoria Fossil Cave.
"We recast some of the original molds and made the new mount based on a 3D model of the Nullarbor skeleton and recast new hands and caudal vertebrates to match the latest fossil record research," says Mr Burke.
Thylacoleo carnifex is commonly referred to as a marsupial lion, largely because of the cat-like nature of its skull and its carnivorous habits. Weighing around 120 kg, the largest mammalian predator on the Australian continent was capable of grasping or slashing its prey with the long sharp claws on its semi-opposable thumb, then stabbing or strangling with its large incisor teeth.
These animals were relatively common across most of Australia during the Pleistocene period and became extinct about 50,000 years ago. Its evolutionary history has been traced back to the ancient rainforests of Riversleigh in Queensland, some 25 million years ago.
