Hopping to New Heights

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In Australia and the neighboring island of New Guinea, paleontologists have found evidence of three unknown extinct species of kangaroos, the Independent reported.

All three species existed between 5 million and 40,000 years ago and belong to a genus that has since disappeared, Protemnodon.

Though fossils of that genus are often found across Australia, their scattered locations have made it difficult for scientists to establish species, Popular Science explained. In this study, researchers analyzed fossils found in Lake Callabonna in South Australia.

One of the species they discovered, Protemnodon viator – whose Latin name indicates it used to travel – thrived in central Australia and weighed up to 375 pounds, twice as much as the largest red kangaroo still living today.

The scientists said it had long limbs and hopped quickly.

The other two species they found hopped differently, and even suggested that one, Protemnodon mamkurra, walked on four legs and only hopped occasionally, “perhaps just when startled.”

The researchers added that the animals roamed Australia’s arid deserts as well as Tasmania and New Guinea’s tropical rainforests. It’s rare for members of a single genus to live in different habitats, they explained.

Though the Protemnodon went extinct in Australia 40 millennia ago, they may have survived a bit longer in Tasmania and New Guinea.

How they disappeared from Earth’s surface remains a mystery.