Ancient Australia was home to 'strange' marsupial giants, scientists find

Researchers are building a picture of palorchestids, which had tapir-like skulls and large scimitar-like claws

The "strange" anatomy of a family of giant marsupials that roamed eastern Australia and Tasmania for much of the past 25m years has been revealed in a new study.

Scientists had already figured out that palorchestids had tapir-like skulls and large "scimitar-like claws", but little was known about the limbs of one of the "strangest marsupial lineages to have existed", according to the paper published by a group of Australian researchers.