Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Not content with having largest number of venomous species of spiders and snakes, not to mention crocodiles and great whites, in the known universe, they had to go and get carnivorous kangaroos (Next Winnie the Pooh book will be titled "Roo and Tiger Clean Out The Hundred Acre Wood") and "demon ducks of doom":
"Because they didn't hop, these were galloping kangaroos, with big, powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines (fangs) like wolves," Archer told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.Vertebrate paleontologist Sue Hand said modern kangaroos look almost nothing like their ferocious forebears, which lived between 10 million and 20 million years ago.
The species found at the dig had "well muscled-in teeth, not for grazing. These things had slicing crests that could have crunched through bone and sliced off flesh," Hand said.
The team also found prehistoric lungfish and large duck-like birds.
"Very big birds ... more like ducks, earned the name 'demon duck of doom', some at least may have been carnivorous as well," Hand told ABC radio.
I hope you Australians are happy with yourselves and your darn carnivorous ducks!
Seriously, Australia is starting to remind me of Deathworld
Added Later: As Nick points out I forgot the jellyfish...
Comments
Unfortuately here in Australia we have people at universites dedicated to jazz up boring science to make it more appealing to the public. I say unfortunate because media exposure is the only way to get funding from the government in Australia, for science that is otherwise out of the public mind.
Posted by: Josh | July 13, 2006 12:10 AM
Josh, the media is more than capable of "jazzing up" a press release.
BTW, the carnoroos are old news. I learned about them when I was about your age, and that's a while ago.
The galloping roos are new to me.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | July 13, 2006 1:06 AM
The caption under the photo says: "The skull of an extinct giant, meat-eating kangaroo known as Ekaltadeta which lived 23 million." Giant? It's less than 10cm long, that aren't no giant! I guess, it's "jazzed up" ;)
cheers!
Posted by: Hans | July 13, 2006 9:37 AM
Alan - I stopped researching when I discovered the Riversleigh finds (which is what the above article refers to) go back to 2002. I'm not really surprised that "carnaroos" are old news. I would love to see them turned into a movie for the Sci-Fi channel...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | July 13, 2006 12:23 PM
The Riversleigh deposit goes back a long way, in fact there was a book published on the place in around 2001. It's a relatively young freshwater limestone deposit (still forming) and has hundreds of little caves and other karst features through it. As they find more caves, they find more extinct marsupials, often from that bygone era in Australian ecology where we had marsupial megafauna roaming the country.
In fact, weirder things probably existed, like giant meat eaters with wombat looking heads. Weird things exist even now, have you seen our prime minister?
Posted by: Josh | July 13, 2006 7:49 PM
No, can't say that I have. Anyway, I stopped looking when I found a reference to Archer finding stuff in 2002. I'm not real surprised that stuff had been found before then...
Okay, that is just not right in the cosmic scheme of things. Wombats are so cute...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | July 13, 2006 8:13 PM
Carnivorous kangaroos for some reason seem really, really cool to me.
Posted by: C.K. Loo | July 21, 2006 7:22 PM