found the elephant quote
Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 11:31 am
"The answer to the question of why the pines experienced an enormous crash in their population is fairly clear. The converse-why they survived-is not. The only explanation that makes sense is sheer chance. Australian prehistory appears to be littered with the occurrence of million to one events that took place only because millions of years have passed. New research is showing that, given enough time for freak events to occur and for chance to run its course, life can find
itself in completely odd places. Elephants, for instance, may once have lived in Australia. The director of the Australian Museum, Mike Archer, is aware of the existence of three elephant fossils, found as far apart as Western Australia and New South Wales. For three fossils to be found suggests elephants once lived on the continent in significant numbers. Australia, however, is surrounded by a very deep trench of water that has never been less than sixty kilometres away from the closest Indonesian island with a healthy elephant population. 'Living elephants are very capable swimmers,' Archer observed in a recent scientific article, 'some having been known to snorkel and dog paddle their way across forty-five kilo metres of ocean. Is it then so inconceivable that a sea going pachyderm every once in a very rare while scared the poo out of a bug-eyed kangaroo as it hauled its superwrinkled, barnacle-encrusted bulk onto an Australian shore?"
The Wollemi Pine-James Woodford-Page 119.
itself in completely odd places. Elephants, for instance, may once have lived in Australia. The director of the Australian Museum, Mike Archer, is aware of the existence of three elephant fossils, found as far apart as Western Australia and New South Wales. For three fossils to be found suggests elephants once lived on the continent in significant numbers. Australia, however, is surrounded by a very deep trench of water that has never been less than sixty kilometres away from the closest Indonesian island with a healthy elephant population. 'Living elephants are very capable swimmers,' Archer observed in a recent scientific article, 'some having been known to snorkel and dog paddle their way across forty-five kilo metres of ocean. Is it then so inconceivable that a sea going pachyderm every once in a very rare while scared the poo out of a bug-eyed kangaroo as it hauled its superwrinkled, barnacle-encrusted bulk onto an Australian shore?"
The Wollemi Pine-James Woodford-Page 119.