Skull of Simosthenurus gilli.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria
Skull of Procoptodon goliah.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria
Skull of Protemnodon.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria
Today’s kangaroos have some weird and alarming ancestors. The largest living kangaroo is the Red Kangaroo, standing nearly two metres tall. But even the largest ‘big red’ would have been dwarfed by Procoptodon, the largest of the extinct macropods. It had a short, flattened snout, making the skull look a little like a giant human skull.
A smaller relative of this giant was Simosthenurus, which also had a short face with teeth adapted for browsing shrubs.
Protemnodon was a diverse genus of forest-dwelling wallabies that is now extinct. The name means ‘front-cutting teeth’, which describes their distinctive, blade-shaped premolar tooth.