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Science

Demon Ducks of Doom? 26

Posted by michael from the drop-croc dept.
prester writes "The BBC has an article on an Australian exhibit on its way to the UK about the nasty creatures of prehistoric Australia. Among them the 3m high carnivorous "Demon Duck of Doom" and the "drop croc," a crocodile that was believe to drop out of trees on its victims. And there were people living there at the same time as these things. Yikes!"
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Demon Ducks of Doom? More

Demon Ducks of Doom?

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  • Other than the thought that it's hard to read any of the quotes or captions in anything other than the Crocodile Hunter accent ("This kangaroo had a taste for flesh"), my first thought is "Gee, if stuff like this existed on Earth, I wonder what is out there on other planets?" Suddenly tales of oxyboosted Grendels and non-symmetrical fast breeders take on a creepy plausability. Not to mention a certain Geiger inspired critter...

    --
    Evan

    • Re:Ouch. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not really. All these animals seem to fit into the same picture as other massive prehistoric megafauna. Kangaroos and ducks exist, so why is it bizarre to expect that carnivorous forms of these animals could also exist? It's not like they're discovering animals with vastly different body plans or survival skills than other animals previously discovered. It's simply that these animals in particular represent a new and different variety of the standard post-Jurassic mammalian/avian bestiary. But they don't diverge from that bestiary any more than Australia's contemporary wildlife differs from the rest of the world's.
      • This simply defies belief. These animals became extinct 50,000 years ago, yet except for scale they are just like the modern animals living in the same area today. I'm not a palentologist, but this just doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It isn't like we have mini-brontosauri wandering around the plains in the central US.

        • These animals became extinct 50,000 years ago, yet except for scale they are just like the modern animals living in the same area today. I'm not a palentologist, but this just doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It isn't like we have mini-brontosauri wandering around the plains in the central US.

          There's a big difference between creatures that died out 50,000 years ago and creatures that died out 65 million years ago. Many of the creatures that lived in the US 50,000 years ago were as similar to our modern animals as these things are to the animals in Australia now.

          Incidentally, crocs and alligators have been basically unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, so in a way we do have little dinosaurs - not in the central US, but in the southeast.
    • There are scary and fantastic creatures in the world today. For example Red River Gorge is plagued by flying snakes [uncoveror.com] and flesh-eating termites! [uncoveror.com]
    • Humans are probably resposible for many of the extinctions of large animals everywhere. Pate and scrambled eggs from 9ft ducks can feed a lot of hungry mouths.
  • Gah! No pics of the Demon Duck or Drop Croc?

    Here's some:
    http://www.lostkingdoms.com/facts/factsheet39.htm [lostkingdoms.com]

    Or even toys:
    http://www.yowiepower.com/lostkingdoms/boof2.htm [yowiepower.com]
  • Yikes? From what I've read on the subject of Australia's extinct giants, they were most likely wiped out 'quickly' by our human ancestors after they found their way to the island, as the animals had not had the advantage of millions of years of learning to fear man. So we just clubbed them on the head, had a ton of duck stew, wore duck skin coats, and laughed at those stupid enough to walk underneath trees with crocs in them.
  • Seriously, the croc referance is really obscure. how I understand birds evovled from reptiles but they should put down the crack pipe here.
  • A model of the creature features in the exhibition and shows it to have the fur of a wombat, the nose of a koala and claws like meat cleavers.
    When I found out this creature coexisted with humans, I demanded to know more--they sent me a picture of the beast [mac.com]!
    (sorry bout the iDisk thing--waaaay behind a closed FTP port here)
  • i guess this is what animals do when they're stuck on an island without much change or much to do for centuries
  • I read Demon Ducks for Doom
  • Really kick ass animals like flesh eating kangaroos and marsupial lions go extinct, while others such as the wallaby thrive.
  • The article mentions the exhibit being shown at a museum and the curators hoping people will begin to appreciate the need to protect the environment and stop pushing species to extinction. I don't think this shop of horrors - 10 foot high carnivorous duck, huge man-eating kangaroo, and crocodile that leaped down from trees - is going to inspire a humane attempt to preserve wildlife! It's going to send them running for the hills!

    hehe imagine what hitting a kangaroo like that would do to your car. and then what it would do to you.

    That said, this is a really neat find!

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