Startlingly modern kangaroo fossil found, according to reports in La Trobe University Media Report and The Age, 4 June 2008.
Ben Kear, a palaeontologist at La Trobe University, and Neville Pledge of the South Australian Museum have been studying a kangaroo fossil found in the Ngama Quarry, Lake Eyre Basin, central Australia. The fossil has been named Ngamaroo archeri, in honour of palaeontologist Michael Archer. It has been dated as 25 million years old and is described as being “different, but startlingly similar to the modern kangaroo”.
Ben Kear commented: “This discovery is important because what we have found is the oldest direct ancestor of our modern Skippy. It didn’t look all that different from today’s kangaroos and it was hopping.” He is also reported in The Age as saying, “Even 25 million years ago, kangaroos were kind of doing what they do today. What we’re looking at is effectively a winning body plan.”
The La Trobe media report goes on to state, “The Ngamaroo roamed an Australian landscape that was wetter, with more abundant and greener foliage. Its diet comprised softer types of vegetation than the tough grasses eaten by the modern kangaroo, which has grinding teeth, and processes its food in the gut in a similar way to the horse.”
Editorial Comment: Michael Archer is a passionate anti-creationist, but this new fossil with his name attached to it fits into Biblical, rather than evolutionary, biology. If kangaroos have been “doing what they do today” for 25 million years, that means they have reproduced after their kind, just as Genesis says.
The description of the Australian landscape as being wetter and covered with abundant soft green foliage also fits the Biblical history of the world. The Bible describes an original good world, watered by a daily mist – an environment suitable for abundant soft foliage. After Noah’s flood, that climate became harsher and more erratic, and many places, such as Australia, could no longer sustain lush vegetation and slowly became desert as we approach the present.
For our non-Australian readers, kangaroos are sometimes referred to as “Skippy” after a character in an Australian 1960s TV programme “Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo”.
Evidence News, 11 June 2008
Were you helped by this item? If so, consider making a donation so we can keep sending out Evidence News and add more items to this archive. For USA tax deductible donations click here. For UK tax deductible donations click here. For Australia and rest of world click here.