Did some Kangaroos skip the hop?

A new study published in #Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology suggests that some ancient kangaroos may not have hopped at all, an intriguing claim given the well known characteristic of kangaroos as we know them. The study has revealed?that there were many other kinds of large kangaroos in the past who moved in unlikely ways, like walking on two legs like humans, or and on all fours like most mammals.

The pathbreaking study is a review of fossil evidence of kangaroos and their kith and kin from the last 25 million years. It presents new analyses of limb bone and ankle bone metric data of these fossils, lending credence to the ‘no hopping’ claim. According to?researchers, the emblematic rapid “speed-endurance hopping” was rare or absent in a few large-bodied families of kangaroos.

• Hopping was a key development?in kangaroo evolution, but mostly in small-bodied species
• The larger kangaroos tried different options and endurance hopping was one of them
• Protemnodons, or “giant wallabies,” are distant cousins of modern large kangaroos but they walked on all fours while the sthenurine, or the?short-faced kangaroos adopted a two-legged stride irrespective of speeds

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