Demon Ducks of Doom?

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!"

Comments

Ouch.

[JabberWokky]

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.

[g4dget]

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.

Re:Ouch.

[monkeydo]

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.

Re:Ouch.

[ShavenYak]

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.

Wait until the Hockey fans get a load of this...

[TheGreatGraySkwid]

Gah! No pics of the Demon Duck or Drop Croc?

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

Or even toys:
http://www.yowiepower.com/lostkingdoms/boof2.htm

Notice they're all dead

[phug]

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.

Re:Notice they're all dead

[rushiferu]

"and laughed at those stupid enough to walk underneath trees with crocs in them."

Maybe they just learned to walk with their spears pointed up...

Pictures of the beast!

[jeblucas]

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!
(sorry bout the iDisk thing--waaaay behind a closed FTP port here)

Re:Pictures of the beast!

[macdaddy357]

That's not the demon duck of doom! Here's a picture of the Demon Duck of Doom! run for your life!

Strange how evolution works

[spike hay]

Really kick ass animals like flesh eating kangaroos and marsupial lions go extinct, while others such as the wallaby thrive.