Australian scientists identify first long-distance walkers using 3D scanning

Scientists have discovered one of Australia's first long-distance walkers,a 250kg marsupial with "heeled hands" that explored the continent's parched interior 3.5 million years ago.

Flinders University palaeontologists used 3D scanning to describe a new group of ancient marsupials called Ambulator - meaning walker or wanderer - for its distinctive leg and foot characteristics that allowed it to easily move large distances.

The classification is based on the finding of an incomplete skeleton in 2017 at the Kalamurina Sanctuary of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy in north-eastern South Australia.

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According to Jacob van Zoelen, the study's primary author and a PhD student at Flinders University, the specimen, now known as Ambulator keanei, was unusual for the quantity of bones it contained that originated from a single species.

“What was really cool about this specimen is that the foot was encased in concretion, this rock that formed shortly after death,” he told The Guardian.

Soft tissue imprints inside the rock were revealed by CT scanning, providing researchers with knowledge into the nature of the animal's footpad.

Many huge contemporary herbivores, such as elephants and rhinoceroses, are digitigrades, which means they walk on the tips of their toes rather than their heels.

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What areAmbulators?

Ambulator, on the other hand, was a plantigrade that walked with its heels on the ground to distribute weight, much like humans.

These adaptations occurred at a period when the Australian climate got drier and grasslands and open habitat increased.

“These animals were needing methods of evolving efficient locomotion,” Van Zoelen told the Guardian.

Ambulator is a member of the diprotodontids, a family of giant marsupial herbivores that played an important role in Australian ecosystems until the final species became extinct some 40,000 years ago.

Diprotodontids were an incredibly diverse family of animals, Van Zoelen said. “You’ve got ones that are capable of climbing … you have ones with insanely large cheekbones like Euryzygoma, you’ve got ones with really gnarly teeth.”

“The largest herbivores we have today are kangaroos, but some of these animals grew up to 2.7 tonnes,” he added.

The rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon, the biggest marsupial known to live, was one prominent diprotodontid.

Ambulator keanei was originally placed in the genus Zygomaturus, but researchers determined that "while the teeth are very similar, the skull is much more slender, with much smaller cheek muscles than Zygomaturus," according to Van Zoelen.

The findings have been published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

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