Scientists Claim Ancient Kangaroos Did Not Jump, Here's How It Went

Scientists Claim Ancient Kangaroos Did Not Jump, This Is How It Happened

In a new study, paleontologists from England and Sweden reviewed fossil evidence of kangaroo and its relatives' (wallaby, tree-kangaroo, rat-kangaroo, etc.) movements over the past 25 million years. Their research findings indicate that high-speed hopping, commonly found in modern large kangaroos, may be rare or absent except in some groups of large kangaroos, including direct ancestors of modern large kangaroos such as the red kangaroo and the grey kangaroo.

"Makropodidae"

Makropodidae, the crown group that includes kangaroos, wallaroos, wallabies, pademelons, tree kangaroos, quokkas, striped rabbit wallabies, and extinct short-faced kangaroos, are classic "environmentally friendly" models for adaptive specialization towards higher speed and jumping endurance.

"Very Diverse"

Although the popular image of the 'flying kangaroo' QANTAS, the evolution of kangaroo movement and its more distant crown group relatives turned out to be highly diverse, with documented fossil and living species showing various modes of movement such as bipedal, quadrupedal, saltatorial, pentapedal, ambulatory, cursorial, and scansorial, as well as digging behavior that has developed over the past 25 million years.

The oldest recognized kangaroo species from the Late Oligocene to the Middle Miocene (25 to 15 million years ago) likely used quadrupedal hopping, climbing, and slow hopping as their primary modes of movement. However, all early forms were small, weighing less than 12 kg, with larger kangaroos above 20 kg appearing in the Late Miocene (around 10 million years ago), coinciding with increased aridity and the spread of open vegetated habitats.

Jumping has functional problems in larger body sizes.

Therefore, some kangaroo radiation members then achieve a more specialized anatomy for efficient high-speed jumps in body sizes above 35 kg.

Lompatan memiliki masalah fungsional pada ukuran tubuh yang lebih besar.

The translation of the given text from Bahasa to English while preserving any HTML tags is as follows:

Kangaroo is an extraordinary modern creature in jumping, but currently there is none that weighs above 100 kg (most are below 70 kg) and many extinct forms were much larger than this and too big to jump.

Scientists Claim Ancient Kangaroos Did Not Jump, Here's How It Went

"\u201cWe want people to be aware that large kangaroos were much more diverse 50,000 years ago, which may also mean that the habitat in Australia was somewhat different from now,\u201d said Professor Christine Janis from the University of Bristol, the first author of the study."

"The fact is, modern large jumping kangaroos are exceptions in kangaroo evolution."

Although jumping seems to have originated in early kangaroo evolution, in small-sized forms, with the emergence of larger-sized kangaroos in the Late Miocene, there were several different options: to specialize in long-lasting jumps of large size, as in the case of modern kangaroo ancestors, or to adopt other forms of high-speed movement, as in the case of two main extinct branches.

Protemnodon (commonly known as 'giant wallaby', closely related to modern large kangaroos) is likely to rely on quadripedal movement most of the time, and rarely performs jumps. The short-faced sthenurine kangaroo, a branch that diverged from all modern kangaroos about 15 million years ago, seems to have adopted a bipedal walking style at all speeds.

New data on the length of the tibia (shinbone) and calcaneum (ankle bone) strengthens the previous hypothesis about the differences in movement between modern kangaroos and these two extinct groups.

"Especially supported by this new data is the idea of walking bipedally rather than hopping in sthenurines, as their calcanea do not have the anatomy (long calcaneal heel) that would help counteract the rotational forces on the ankle experienced during hopping, and show a more upright leg posture than the hunched posture important for hopping," said co-author Adrian O'Driscoll, a Ph.D. student at the University of York."

"Jumping Kangaroo Movement"

"Assuming that the increase in droughts across continents after the end of the Miocene selectively supports kangaroos jumping too simplistically," said Professor Janis. "Jumping is just one of many modes of movement used by kangaroos both in the past and today, and jumping with high endurance in modern kangaroos should not be considered as the 'peak of evolution'."

“<i>Apa yang membuat kanguru modern yang mampu melompat-lompat daya tahan tampak begitu tidak biasa adalah kepunahan hewan serupa yang bergerak dengan cara berbeda secara geologis baru-baru ini</i>.”

"The thing that makes modern kangaroos capable of hopping endurance look so unusual is the recent extinction of similar animals that moved in a different geological way."

Source: Sci.news

"\u201cWe may need an Australian rival airline that covers shorter distances than QANTAS and offers a new motif called sthenurine that strides!\u201d"

The following 'Bahasa' text translated to 'English' while preserving any html tags: "This team's paper is published in Alcheringa: an Australasian Journal of Palaeontology."

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