It seems that the crew of two, Brus and Vilhus were despatched on an urgent mission to divert the asteroid which impacted on the Yucatan Peninsula some 65 million years ago.
However, their success was only partial, and their craft crashed owing to a computer malfunction caused by the "Era Bug". All Philosorapture computers had reset their clocks to the start of the Cretaceous Era, rather than advancing on to the Tertiary Era, so that the timing of the impact could not have been worse.
They had discovered the theory of relativity some 67 million years before Einstein and were well aware of the constraints placed on craft approaching the speed of light (i.e., approaching infinite mass).
They elegantly solved this problem by developing an atomic drive in which their reactor, AND its plutonium, also approached infinite mass. Infinite mass of plutonium together with the formula: E=MC˛ results in infinite power.
Skilled atomic engineers, they preferred to generate electricity using clean, non polluting atomic power rather than burn fossil fuels, and disposed of atomic waste either by firing it into the sun, or when required to add heat and control the speed of continental drift, injecting it into the base of the earth's mantle. In this way they had separated the Australian landmass from Antarctica and directed it towards the equator. Indeed, their mining had an additional bonus, for the east coast of Australia had been sterile and uninhabitable because of the high concentrations of uranium ore. Over several million years they mined this, turned much into power, and disposed properly of the waste products in their traditional manner. What later became Sydney Harbour, and the Jamison Valley near Katoomba were, in fact, formerly some of their open cut mines.
Their society was then able to expand from its heartland in central Australia, around the great inland sea, towards the east. Their history, in fact, records the devastation caused to their northern provinces by the great asteroid impact of 130 million years ago which made the 22km wide crater of Gosse Bluff, west of present day Alice Springs.
This long tradition made them acutely aware of the dangers from outer space and ready to act 65 million years ago when disaster threatened, and although only partially successful, that partial success may well have prevented ALL life on earth being wiped out.
Biological Experiments
As is well known, "Out Of Africa" is the currently fashionable superstition amongst most anthropologists, with human origins being attributed to certain pre humans dating back a million years ago or so in the Rift Valley, or backblocks of Kenya where today warring tribes of anthropologists can be found kicking and gouging at each other in the mud and the blood and the bones. This theory limped along, provided that the parties by agreement ignored inconvenient finds in Australia, eg. Lake Mungo in outback NSW.
However, Philosorapture data shows that pre humans date back to at least 68 million years and developed from pets bred by them. Using sophisticated gene splicing methods, they worked with early mammals, combined certain characteristics of simians and rodents and produced creatures with thoroughly human characteristics, apes with rat cunning - our ancestors - whose appearance and mannerisms were not so different from present day humans that they would not draw much attention if they turned up at some binges and barbecues during a South Pacific Star Party. Then again, at some South Pacific Star Party binges, in Bon Glen, King Kong would pass unnoticed. From Australia they spread to Africa and then to the rest of the world to develop into the present Homo sapiens.