Just probably not as far as today’s marsupials.
Kangaroos have likely been hopping across the planet for much longer than experts previously believed. Not only that, but the ancestors of today’s marsupials landed their leaps while growing much larger than their descendents. For thousands of years, the planet’s largest hopping animal has remained Australia’s red kangaroo (Osphranter rufus). A male “Big Red” easily reaches over five feet tall, weighs 200 pounds, and travels around 37 mph at a pace of up to six feet per leap. But as big as they are today, their evolutionary relatives were even heftier. During the Ice Age around 45,000 years ago, giant kangaroos in the Sthenurinae subfamily often grew over double the size of present-day marsupials. Paleontologists estimate the largest, Procoptodon goliah, stood 6.5 feet tall and weighed upwards of 550 pounds.
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