End of the New Guinean megafauna. Artist’s impression of the Nombe Rock Shelter showing the large kangaroo (renamed Nombe Nombe), on left. Illustration courtesy Peter Shouten
Palaeontologists from Flinders University in South Australia have described a new genus of giant fossil kangaroo from the mountains of central Papua New Guinea.
The new description of the fossil kangaroo has found that, rather than being closely related to Australian kangaroos, it most likely belongs to a unique genus of more primitive kangaroo found only in PNG.
The kangaroo, first described in 1983 by Professor Tim Flannery, is known from fossils around 20,000-50,000 years old. They come from the Nombe Rockshelter, an archaeological and palaeontological site in Chimbu Province, Papua New Guinea.
Nombe is already known as a location of multiple extinct species of kangaroo and giant four-legged marsupials called diprotodontids.
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