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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

A sight to see 40,000 years ago: a hefty kangaroo up a tree

Flexible shoulders hint that a sizable and now-extinct marsupial could manoeuvre through the branches.
Bones from the hands of Congruus kitcheneri.

An extinct kangaroo’s massive, curving ‘fingers’ would have helped it to grasp and climb. Credit: N. M. Warburton & G. J. Prideaux/R. Soc. Open Sci. (CC BY 4.0)

A large kangaroo climbing a tree might sound roo-diculous today. But tens of thousands of years ago, some bulky kangaroos were indeed adapted to arboreal life, according to new research.

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Nature 592, 11 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00772-y

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