Meet the biggest and most bizarre skink ever found in Australia. It became extinct 47,000 years ago
- Written by Mike Lee, Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University

Many of the giant marsupials and birds that roamed ancient Australia had vanished by 40,000 years ago. While the duration and drivers of these extinctions remain debated, fossils clearly show the continent lost a host of creatures which would have dwarfed humans, such as short-faced kangaroos, diprotodons, “thund...