KEY POINTS:
It's a discovery that skips right over conventional wisdom about one of the Australia's greatest icons.
The earliest kangaroos galloped on four legs, fossils discovered in northern Queensland indicate.
Scientists believe the 25-million-year-old remains, dug up in Queensland in the Riversleigh world heritage area in the 1990s, are from a newly discovered extinct species called nambaroo gillespieae.
It was part of an extinct kangaroo group known as the Balbaridae, which scientists believe was replaced by present-day kangaroo. The nambaroo was about the size of a small dog, had canine fangs and was a quadruped.
"This is really the great-great-great-great-grandfather of modern kangaroos," La Trobe University palaeontologist Ben Kear, part of the Australian team that examined the remains, said. "It's very different to what we would imagine from your average kangaroo, your Skippy on the dinner plate that you see today."
Dr Kear said the find would unlock the genesis of today's kangaroos.
- AAP
