Sydney, Sep 2 - Scientists have uncovered the remains of a giant hippo-like creature near Alcoota, a find that will shed new light on the territory's prehistoric past.

For 25 years, palaeontologsts from the Northern Territory (NT) Museum and Flinders University have been painstakingly extracting the remains of giant flightless birds, wombat-like creatures and crocodiles from a nearly seven million-year-old fossil site near Alcoota.

This month, they uncovered yet another important piece of Australia's early history. They unearthed jawbones of four Zygomaturus gilli, a species ancestral to the giant hippo-like animal that roamed Australia up to 45,000 years ago, according to a Flinder's release.

Gavin Prideaux from Flinders University said the discovery was very exciting.