Long ago, almost until the end of the last Ice Age, giant kangaroos lived in the rainforests of New Guinea.. Now a team of scientists led by Isaac Alan Robert Kerr of Flinders University has found that these animals were not related to modern Australian animals.. They most likely belonged to a previously unknown type of kangaroo unique to New Guinea, according to an article published by Science alert..

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In the past, Australia was home to giant animals called megafauna.. They lived on the continent along with the species that are characteristic of it now, but they were also much larger.. However, 40 thousand years ago, most representatives of the megafauna died out..

The fossil megafauna of New Guinea is much less well understood, but even what is known now hints at the existence of amazing and unusual animals whose evolutionary histories are intertwined with those of Australia..

Excavations led by Mary Jane Mountain in the early 1970s unearthed the jaws of a giant, extinct kangaroo.. Young researcher Tim Flannery named the species Protemnodon nombe.

The age of the fossils that Flannery described is 20-50 thousand years.. They were found in the Nombe rock shelter, an archaeological and paleontological site in the mountains of central Papua New Guinea.. Fossils of another kangaroo and giant quadrupedal marsupials called diprotodontids have also been found at this site..

Scientists reexamine Protemnodon nombe fossils and find something unexpected in new study. This kangaroo was not a member of the Protemnodon genus, which previously lived throughout Australia.. It was something much more primitive and unknown.

So, unusual molars with curved enamel ridges were different from all other known kangaroos.. As a result, the researchers placed the animal in a completely new genus unique to New Guinea and named it Nombe nombe..

According to scientists, this genus originated from an ancient form of kangaroo that migrated to New Guinea from Australia about 5-8 million years ago.. In those days, a land bridge connected New Guinea and Australia.. He allowed early Australian animals, including megafauna, to migrate to the rainforests of New Guinea.. When the Torres Strait flooded again, these animal populations broke away from their Australian relatives and evolved separately to adapt to their tropical and mountainous home..

Scientists believe that Nombe nombe was a descendant of one of these ancient lines of kangaroos.. A squat, muscular animal lived in a montane rainforest with dense undergrowth and a closed canopy.. It was adapted to feeding on the tough leaves of trees and shrubs, which gave it a thick jaw and strong chewing muscles..

At the moment, the species is known only from two lower jaws, so scientists still have a lot to learn about it.. For example, did he move by jumping, like modern kangaroos. It is also unknown why this ancient animal became extinct..