Thursday, November 11, 2010

CFZ AUSTRALIA: Thylacoleo roadkill in NSW?


Paul Clacher has an interesting relatively new Thylacoleo sighting on his website - the proverbial dead animal beside the highway. Sadly no one ever seems to stop and take photos or collect carcasses!

20100807 - Pearson's Lookout (NSW) Sighting - December 2008 around 4:00 pm Reported 07/08/2010

Subject: Thylacoleo sighting

In December 2008, I was travelling south on the Castlereagh Hwy near Pearson's Lookout between the towns of Capertee and Ilford on the way back to Sydney after an overnight delivery trip through Orange, Dubbo and Mudgee in an 8 tonne rigid truck. No bonnet so I have unobscured vision. This is on the edge of the Capertee Valley and is about 900 - 1000 metres asl. The dropoff to the LHS (east) is steep to the valley. Late in the afternoon, say around 4.00 pm and about 200m south past the lookout, I noticed 2 X roadkill's on the southbound side just on the shoulder of the road.

Doing about 80km/h, I had a 5 or 6 second look at a small dead roo and something else. The markings on the torso of the other animal were dark brown / black and the main colour was tan. The markings made me look closer and the carcass was intact. The ears were rounded, the head was stout and like a lion cub and the front paws were huge in comparison to it's body size. The back paws and tail were obscured because of the position it landed in after being run over. (probably feeding on the small roo). My first thoughts were of a small lion, but the dark marking's threw me. It was a thick set animal about 500 - 600mm long. For the rest of the trip to Sydney (2.75 hrs) I couldn't stop wondering what this thing was, and having told the story to several people, I still couldn't come up with a logical explanation.

Read on at the CFZ Australia blog...

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