giant wombat
An ancestor of this baby wombat was as big as an SUV and roamed Australia as recently as 50,000 years ago, scientists say. REUTERS/Will Burgess

Paleontologists found a complete skeleton of a Diprotodon, a three-tonne (6,614 pound) giant marsupial that lived in Australia two million years ago, the BBC reports. It is the first fully intact skeleton of the creature, which was described by the research team as a gigantic wombat.

Scientists say the Diprotodon was widespread in Australia as recently as 50,000 years ago--at the same time the earliest humans lived in the area.

The skeleton was found on a cattle farm in Queensland. Its dimensions suggest a specimen of megafauna the size of a large SUV--the largest marsupial that ever lived. It stood about 6' 6 at the shoulder and was nearly 10 feet long.

This part of Australia was home to several unusual examples of prehistoric animals, including a marsupial lion, a mammalian woodpecker, a tree-dwelling crocodile, a carnivorous kangaroo rat, and a tube-nosed bandicoot.

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