Giant kangaroo, double the size of animals we know today once 'hopped' across Australia: Study

Giant Kangaroos, double the weight of the animal we know today, once roamed Australia, but "hopped" on to the pages of history, becoming an enigma scientists are still exploring today.

Till now, while we knew about them, due to isolated bones, it was difficult to distinguish species. However, a recent research has pegged the number of now-extinct giant marsupial species at three.

As per a team of Paleontologists from Flinders University, the three species — Protemnodon viator, Protemnodon mamkurra and Protemnodon dawsonae, lived around 5 million to 40,000 years ago.

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A Kangaroo bigger than any we know

The extinctgenus Protemnodon, as per experts, looks like today's grey kangaroo, but the animal was generally more squat and muscular. Some species, they say, were only around 45-50 kg, while the rest were much bigger than any living kangaroo.

As per the scientists, of the three recently identified species, Protemnodon viator weighed somewhere around 170kg, double the weight of the heaviest present-day red males, which can weigh up to 90kg.

Viator which in Latin stands for "traveller" or "wayfarer" were long-limbed kangaroo that could hop fairly quickly and efficiently. The research team says that the giant kangaroo lived in similar areas as the red kangaroos of today and was well-adapted to the arid central Australian habitat.

The other two — Protemnodon mamkurra and Protemnodon dawsonae — are new.

"The newly described Protemnodon mamkurra is likely one of these. A large but thick-boned and robust kangaroo, it was probably fairly slow-moving and inefficient. It may have hopped only rarely, perhaps just when startled," said Kerr.

Earlier, experts believed that these Protemnodon moved on all four legs. However, the research led by Isaac Kerr suggests that this was only true for about three or four species. Others, they believe, moved like a quokka or potoroo "bounding on four legs at times, and hopping on two legs at others".

Evidence

The research, as per an article in Phys.org, follows the discovery of multiple complete fossilised Kangaroo skeletons from Lake Callabonna in arid South Australia in 2013, 2018 and 2019.

The findings have been published in journal Megataxa under the title: "Systematics and palaeobiology of kangaroos of the late Cenozoic genus Protemnodon (Marsupialia, Macropodidae)".

(With inputs from agencies)