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Show UVCD MANY CENTURIES AGO Skeleton of Giant Wombat, Recently Found in Tasmania, Beliovtd to Be 20,000 Years Old. A complete skeleton recently discovered discov-ered in the Mowbray marsh, on the far outskirts of the wild marshy regions of Northwest Tasmania confirms the existence 20,000 or 30,000 years ago of a giant wombat (one of the pouched animals peculiar to the Ant'pndes). The discovery was mode by Mr. Lovett, a farmer, who was digging a drain into the swamp. The skeleton lay burled In six feet of decayed vegetable matter resting on sand that was once the bed of a lake. Mr. Scott of the Lnuneeston museum, examined and excavated the skeleton and expressed the opinion that the animal had lived perhaps more than 20,000 years ago, says the London Daily Mail. It Is the only specimen yet discovered. In life the animal would be bigger than a mule, with four elephantine legs and a head very much like a bulldog. Experts liellevv it to be a smaller species of a gigantic marsupial approaching in s'ze the Brontosaurus (which weighed 80 to 00 tons). It lias long, bearlike tusks, and probably lived on herbs and was slow of movement. The present-day wombat Is a burrowing bur-rowing animal from two to three feet long, with a short, thick hotly, short Intra nnd very little tail. |