Ancient animals moved in an unusual way
Giant kangaroo fossils discovered by scientists who identified three new species of extinct megafauna. It is believed that a representative of the species Protemnodon viator weighed up to 170 kg, which is twice the size of the largest living species.
Photo: Flinders University
Super-sized marsupials have lived on the Australian continent for thousands of years, writes The Guardian. But still the idea of giant kangaroos – or protemnodons – was limited to isolated bones and hard-to-distinguish species.
Scientists have now identified three new species of extinct giant kangaroos – Protemnodon viator, Protemnodon mamkurra and Protemnodon dawsonae, which lived from 5 to 40,000 years ago.
According to scientists, Protemnodon viator weighed up to 170 kg – twice as large as the heaviest modern male kangaroos.
It was previously thought that most protemnodons walked on all four legs, but researchers now say this only applies to three or four species. Others moved, they said, «sometimes hopping on four legs and sometimes on two.»
Isaac Kerr, the paper's lead author, said classifying the species would allow future research into how giant kangaroos evolved and responded to environmental changes.
Researchers from Flinders University photographed and 3D scanned 900 exhibits in 14 major museums in Australia, the UK, the USA and Papua New Guinea.
Photo: Flinders University
The scientists found significant differences between the species, such as different jumping techniques that Kerr, then a graduate student at Flinders University, described as «very unusual.»
These differences could be related to adaptations to completely different living conditions – from arid Central Australia to the forested mountains of Tasmania and Papua New Guinea.
Kerr said that while kangaroos are Australia's national animal, they are «as New Guinean as Australians.»
“There are groups of kangaroos living in New Guinea today that we don't even have… «They have three species of giant echidnas that eat worms,» he said.
There is no clear explanation why giant kangaroos went extinct while their close relatives such as the gray kangaroo and wallaroo did not did, but Kerr suspects the cause may have been rapid environmental changes caused by human activity.
Gilbert Price, a paleontologist who was not involved in the study, said the research strengthened Australia's fragmented fossil record.
“We do not have such massive fossil data as abroad… we won't see frozen kangaroos or wombats,» he said.
“People often think that we have a rather strange modern ecosystem in Australia… but our animals are comparatively unbizarre compared to what we had in the past”.
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