Tiny Australian wallaby the last living link to extinct giant kangaroos

Date:  December 10, 2018

Source:  Queensland University of Technology

A Queensland University of Technology (QUT) led collaboration with University of Adelaide reveals that Australia's pint-sized banded hare-wallaby is the closest living relative of the giant short-faced kangaroos which roamed the continent for millions of years, but died out about 40,000 years ago.

Published in Systematic Biology, the research involved the first near-complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequencing from extinct Australian megafauna.

DNA was sequenced from inner ear bones (petrous bones) of a 45,000-year-old giant short-faced kangaroo, Simosthenurus occidentalis, part of the Sthenurinae sub-family, found at Mt Cripps in Tasmania

These are the longest DNA sequences ever recovered from Australia's extinct megafauna, with more than 16,000 base pairs of mtDNA, which is used to help understand evolutionary relationships

The results support an evolutionary link between giant short-faced kangaroos (Sthenurinae) and the threatened banded hare-wallaby, Lagostrophus fasciatus

The study also combined the DNA evidence with fossil and anatomical data to trace body size change over the evolutionary history of kangaroos and wallabies

The analysis was conducted by QUT evolutionary biologists PhD researcher Manuela Cascini and Associate Professor Matthew Phillips, from the Science and Engineering Faculty, in collaboration with University of Adelaide's Professor Alan Cooper and Dr Kieren Mitchell, who undertook the DNA sequencing at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA.

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