{"id":838461,"date":"2026-08-01T20:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T20:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/838461\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T20:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T20:37:10","slug":"did-this-giant-prehistoric-1-8m-tall-wombat-inspire-a-man-eating-mythical-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/838461\/","title":{"rendered":"Did this giant, prehistoric 1.8m tall wombat inspire a man-eating mythical monster\u2026?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australia was once home to giant\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/marsupial-facts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">marsupials<\/a>, relatives of today\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/kangaroo-facts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">kangaroos<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/koala-bear\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">koalas<\/a>. The largest amongst them was\u00a0Diprotodon, a 1.8m-tall,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/wombat-facts\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wombat<\/a>-like creature that was Australia\u2019s answer to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/facts-about-rhinos\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">rhinos<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/facts-about-elephants\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">elephants<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/facts-about-hippos\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hippos<\/a>. They lived during the Pleistocene and ultimately faced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/can-extinction-be-good\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">extinction<\/a> 40,000 years ago, around 10,000 years\u00a0after\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/mammals\/how-many-human-species-have-there-been\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">humans<\/a> first set foot in Australia.<\/p>\n<p>The Bunyip, a semi-aquatic, dog-faced man-eater from Aboriginal Australian mythology, is thought to have been inspired by\u00a0Diprotodon. Some suggest that aboriginal legends of this monster may have stemmed from finds of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/groundbreaking-fossil-discoveries\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fossilised<\/a> bones, or even cultural memories of the time when the first Australians lived alongside\u00a0Diprotodon.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"753\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/960px-Bunyip_1890-Edited.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-173617\"\/>Macfarlane, J., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons &#8211; Macfarlane, J., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<p>No matter how stories of the Bunyip originated, the animal it\u2019s supposedly based on was no man-eater.\u00a0Diprotodon\u00a0was a strict vegetarian and gathered in large herds to protect itself from the\u00a0actual\u00a0predators of the time, marsupial lions known as\u00a0Thylacoleo.<\/p>\n<p>Top image credit: Macfarlane, J., Public domain, via <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Bunyip_1890.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia was once home to giant\u00a0marsupials, relatives of today\u2019s kangaroos and koalas. The largest amongst them was\u00a0Diprotodon, a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":838462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,128],"class_list":["post-838461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}