Diprotodon

Across the southern continent, where the forests opened into vast scrublands

and the sky stretched wider than anywhere else on earth, Diprotodon wandered.

The largest marsupial the world would ever know — heavy as a small car,

broad and low-slung, with a face that carried an expression of permanent,

unhurried contemplation. It moved in herds that followed worn paths carved

into the landscape by generations of the same slow, patient footsteps. Where

Diprotodon grazed, the vegetation changed. Where its herds traveled, the

trails became permanent features of the terrain. It shaped its world not

through violence or spectacle but through the simple, cumulative weight of

existing in large numbers over long periods of time. The Resurgence

celebrated its predators — the fanged, the fast, the terrible. But the

quiet truth is that the creatures who most changed the world were the ones

like Diprotodon: gentle, persistent, and present long enough to leave a

mark that outlasted every hunter that ever chased them.