Found this on the news today




December 06, 2007 02:49pm

A 25 MILLION-year-old fossil has revealed that a predecessor of Australia's hopping kangaroo once galloped on all fours, had dog-like fangs and possibly climbed trees, scientists have reported.

"This is really the great, great, great, great grandfather of modern kangaroos,'' a member of the Australian team that analysed the bones, La Trobe University paleontologist Ben Kear, told The Age newspaper.

The near-complete skeleton of the prehistoric kangaroo was found in Queensland state in the 1990s and represents a new species called nambaroo gillespieae, Dr Kear said.

The ancient animal is part of an extinct group of kangaroos known as the balbaridae, which is believed to have been replaced over time by the direct ancestors of modern kangaroos.

Dr Kear said the study found the nambaroo, which was about the size of a small dog and had canine fangs, had "big, muscly forearms'' that showed it galloped or bounded like a brush-tailed possum.

The ancient kangaroo also had opposable "big'' toes and flexible feet, a sign it had some climbing ability, like modern tree kangaroos.

It lived in dense forest, which suggests a diet of fruit and fungi.

"You've got this primitive kangaroo, imagine it's climbing low branches, bounding around the forest floor, eating fungi, eating fallen fruit,'' Dr Kear said.

"It's very different to what we would imagine from your average kangaroo... that you see today.''

Dr Kear said the nambaroo skeleton would help scientists learn more about how climate change affected the evolution of kangaroos over millions of years.

It is thought kangaroos evolved into larger animals that hopped and ate grass as the landscape became drier and grassy plains appeared about 10 to 15 million years ago.

"Looking at a skeleton like this is the Rosetta Stone, it's the quintessential fossil that will give you the beginning of the whole kangaroo radiation,'' Dr Kear said.

The findings are published in the latest issue of the Journal of Paleontology.