- Science
- Laelaps
Paleo Profile: Ganguroo robustiter
Queensland Museum paleontologist Bernard Cooke and colleagues have named the species Ganguroo robustiter. This is the third species named in the genus, and, thanks to a great collection of skulls and postcrania, is now the best known of the three. It’s also the biggest. While these were still relatively small hoppers – about the size of small wallabies – Ganguroo robustiter was more robust than the species that preceded it. This might indicate, Cooke and coauthors write, that the newly-named species was part of a trend towards increasing body size in response to changing habitats during the Miocene. Exactly what those changes were, however, are still held secret in the rock record.